It is a 'first to market' innovation for Jamaica's largest and oldest telecoms, which, since the turn of the decade, has been battered by competition and has confessed to bad bets on recent creations.

For one flat rate per month, ranging from a low of $799 up to $7,499, for on-network, off-network and international calls and SMS texting, bmobile subscribers can buy packages of 280-3,800 minutes and 40-1,000 texts, from among eight structured plans.

First-time effort

"It's the first time that we're putting together comprehensive bundles," said chief commercial officer Mariano Doble, who joined the company last year.

C&WJ sees it as an opportunity to seize market share, saying the plan could "easily add 15 per cent to 20 per cent more to our customer base," according Doble, under its SupaPak prepaid and UltraPak post-paid bundles.

Its brochure matches the cost of each bundle against chief rival Digicel Jamaica's offerings, indicating prices that are 83 per cent to 400 per cent cheaper. For example, C&WJ's cheapest bundle, the SuperPak200, which allows 200 minutes of on-network calls, 40 minutes to other networks and 40 minutes of international calls to the United States, Canada and United Kingdom fixed lines, plus 40 text messages anywhere, is priced at $799 prepaid. Similar services at Digicel, said C&WJ, costs $3,238 - or 305 per cent more.

Less for individual products

But it is also a 250 per cent less than the $2,800 that bmobile subscribers now pay for the individual products, Wednesday Business calculations show.

C&WJ has just under 600,000 'active' mobile subscribers, which means the company is looking to grow its base to about 700,000 or more under this new marketing thrust.

More than 90 per cent of its customers are on pre-paid plans, said Doble.

The post-paid suite is $1,099 for the cheapest bundle of 420 minutes and 60 texts, but packages range up to $6,999 for 3,800 minutes and 1,000 texts. Cable and Wireless, it appears, is seeking to leverage new income from its smaller grouping of post-paid clients, who, since April, have been paying basic rates of $399-$1,499 per month.

C&WJ on Monday laid claim to close to a third of the Jamaican mobile market, but remains a distant second to the 1.9 million customers that Digicel has claimed. MiPhone remains at No 3, with an estimated 220,000 customers.

Doble on Monday exuded confidence in his dismissal of MiPhone, now owned by América Móvil, as a serious threat to C&WJ's market position.

"We have the right plans in place," he told Wednesday Business. "We have 30 per cent market share," he added. "They don't have anything close to that."

Already in place

Doble was cagey about the money being spent on the roll-out of the new plan, saying the infrastructure was already in place and was just being leveraged to deploy new products.

Still, with full-page teaser advertisements in the major newspapers, and promotions on the electronic media, plus glossy product brochures, all spelling a full-scale marketing campaign, the commercial director said the roll-out was a multimillion-dollar investment.

Over the past two to three years, Cable and Wireless Jamaica, backed by its parent C&W Plc, has been rolling out a $5-billion capital-expenditure programme to improve its network, including transmission via construction of new cell towers, topped by new product roll-outs.

Doble said some of the products have not been as lucrative as hoped, and while he gave no specifics, the company has in the past named Homefone and ICC cricket sponsorship as a drag on revenues, while also recently reshaping its Anyone mobile suite and dropping the $10/$8 plan on April 1, around which a massive promotional drive had been mounted two years before.

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