Minister of  Science, Energy and Technology Daryl Vaz has said that telecommunications companies operating in Jamaica will be required to meet a minimum standard of service which will be closely monitored.

His announcement comes against the background of complaints from the public during this time of COVID-19 of dropped calls and generally poor service with little value for money.

Vaz has pledged to bring broadband to every Jamaican by 2025, noting that it is currently concentrated in mainly urban areas.

He is leading the drive to bring in a third telecoms player, heeding the call for more competition, and says the government is expected to give the green light on a request for proposal (RFP) sometime at the end of the first quarter of this year.

There is speculation that this third player will be a consortium of Jamaican business titans led by an ex-Digicel executive.

Yesterday, in a report, the Fair Trading Commission  (FTC) recommended easier requirements for new entrants to the sector and called for more competition in the mobile telephone market.

The FTC found that the telecoms market is vulnerable to coordinated conduct due to the difficulty placed on entering the sector and that spectrum has to be properly managed. It is now calling on Vaz to consider revising the pricing of spectrum in Jamaica.

On the poor quality of service and the need for competition in an effort to give consumers better choices and prices, Opposition Spokesman on Finance Julian Robinson said: “The main factor for this is that we have a duopoly in our market and there is a need for competition. The quality of the service is poor and it is poor because the investments that are required to maintain the network has not been made. So you have two players who  dominate pretty much 100 per cent of the market without any real incentive to improve the quality of the service.”

At the end of last year, Vaz announced that the government would be embarking on a national broadband network strategy projected to cost US$237 million. 

“Already we have secured the assistance of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to develop a national broadband strategy which will support the implementation of this infrastructure,” he said in Parliament.

“In addition, I have formed a national broadband taskforce, under the chairmanship of Michael Lee-Chin, to provide high-level guidance to the ministry’s team and to ensure that the interaction with the IDB and other stakeholders remains targeted and strategic.

“A core technical taskforce has also been formed to provide the input and oversight required to drive the implementation of the strategy and the corresponding broadband network as well as to recommend any policy, legislative or regulatory changes that may be required to ensure sustainability.”