With the cost of renting the company's telephone lines having increased by 25 per cent, several persons interviewed by The Gleaner in a random survey said maintaining a land line was not a financially sound decision.

"It is too expensive, the rent for the land line alone is over $500, and Cable & Wireless is not too efficient either. Better mi buy a (telephone) card," said Andrea Allen from Kingston.

"When the card done, argument done," she said, referring to the prepaid cellular phones that many Jamaicans now use.

CELL PHONES THE WAY TO GO

Another customer, Kathleen Passley, a preacher's wife from St. Thomas, said: "At the moment I really plan to give them back their phone and get to know more about the cellular. With the cellular, if you have $100, it's just $100.

"My husband has a cell phone and I have children going to college with fees to pay. We are a poor family and my husband is the only one working right now," said Mrs. Passley, whose phone bill goes up to $5,000 monthly. "Everyday I look into it and getting these bills is just not helping me," she said.

Other customers such as Marie Parker in St. Ann was not even aware of the rate increase, but said her cost containment strategy was to talk less.

C&W UNTROUBLED

But C&W was not overly perturbed by the reactions.

"It is common knowledge that over the last several years there has been some decrease in demand due to the growth of the cellular market," said corporate communications officer, Ann-Marie Astwood.

"Given the modest increase in monthly rental, and certain call charges, we believe the fixed network represents excellent value for money with an assured quality of service. We do not, therefore, anticipate any significant change directly related to the new rate," said Mrs. Astwood, in a written response from the company.

She said further that the company has always promoted prudent and responsible use of its telephone service.

"As such, a number of credit management and pre-paid services exist. To assist those of our customers who might have less disposable income and who use their telephones very sparingly, we have had a low-user package in place for the last several years," said Mrs. Astwood.

The increase comes in the wake of the rejection by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) of a C&WJ proposal to adjust the rates it charges other service providers to access its network.

The rejection came in December. The access rate adjustment request had been intended to help the company bear the cost of subsidising its land-line network.

The cost of intra-parish calls have risen by 12 per cent and inter-parish calls went up by eight per cent. Under its rate rebalancing programme, the company cut the cost of international outbound calls by five per cent to all countries, except for Cuba.

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