According to Evans Garricks, senior vice-president for retail and residential services, the bundles will give customers lower rates than the current off-peak charge of 46 cents per minute.

"The bundles, which will come in October, will be lower than the current off-peak charge," Garricks told the Observer in an interview.  "So when we release the bundles, along with the single national rate, customers will be able to control their spend."

"For example, $2,000 will buy a bucket of minutes, perhaps 4,500, which is a rate of 45 cents per minute, less than the current intra-parish off-peak rate."

The upshot is that customers will have to determine whether the effective 15 per cent increase in phone rates, on a weighted average basis, or committing to a predetermined amount of minutes at a flat cost will lead to lower spending for them.

Said Garricks: "We should have a bundle solution for each customer that would offset that increase, and we would get a commitment from customers, creating a win-win situation for both of us.

"If a customer does not want to get bundles of minutes, then they have that choice.  I would like to emphasise that there is a choice, and that the single national rate is all about presenting choice."  C&WJ announced last week that, beginning October 1, it will introduce a single rate for telephone calls made within Jamaica from fixed line phones.

However, while it acknowledged that the elimination of different charges for calls made between and within parishes would, in some instances, lead to increased charges on customers' bills, the company did not quantify the additional costs Jamaicans will, on average, have to bear.

Using data supplied by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), Observer calculations suggest that the weighted average price could rise by as much as 15 per cent.

Beginning October 1, C&WJ customers will pay 90 cents per minute during peak hours and 60 cents per minute during off peak hours, irrespective of where in Jamaica they are calling.

They now pay 60 cents per minute for calling within their own parish during peak hours, and 46 cents per minute during off-peak hours.  For calls made outside of a customer's parish, the rate is $1.10 per minute during peak periods and $1 per minute during off-peak periods.

Though the rates for calling between parishes will fall, such calls account for a minority of calls made by C&WJ's land-line customers.  The vast majority of calls made by land-line customers terminate within their own parishes - and are therefore subject to the increased rate.

OUR data on calls made between 2003/04 indicate that on a weighted average basis, 75 per cent of all calls were made within parishes.  Therefore, under the new rate structure, significantly more customers will face a price increase than those whose costs will drop.

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