"Beginning today, customers will be able to get high-speed Internet from Cable and Wireless at prices beginning as low as US$29.95," Rodney Davis told guests yesterday morning at the official opening of C&WJ's annual technology show, Horizon, inside the National Arena in Kingston.

According to Davis, the reduced price is comparable to service providers in South Korea, where the Government made a massive investment in technological infrastructure to ensure that the service is widely available and affordable.

"We're cognisant of the fact that the price of the service will be a crucial factor determining the level of penetration," Davis said.  "Nowhere has this been more evident than in the United States."

America, he said, is the global leader in almost every aspect of life, but has found itself way behind in the pick-up of broadband because a large percentage of the American public still find the current rates for broadband prohibitive.

Against this background, Davis said, C&WJ has moved aggressively to ensure that Jamaicans will find the service affordable by any measure.

According to Davis, the broadband technology holds enormous potential to fuel economic growth.  This, he said, has been recognised by countries in Europe, Asia and North America which are pushing to adopt it.

He said that the George W Bush Administration is now aiming to have universal access to broadband by 2007 after a recent study projected that widespread deployment of the technology could add more than US$500 billion to the US economy and create as many as 1.2 million jobs in a decade.

"Similarly, broadband deployment has become a matter of high priority for the Government of Australia, where it is estimated that the utilisation of technology could pump anywhere between $10 and $25 billion into their economy annually," Davis said.

"Here in Jamaica, so as to ensure that we're not left behind, Cable and Wireless has committed to spearheading the widescale penetration of broadband throughout this country.  We're convinced that ubiquitous access will be a win win for the entire country," added Davis.

However, he admitted that a driving factor in the price reduction was a desire to gain market share.

"We have a very lofty goal .and that is for us to have at least 50,000 broadband customers here in Jamaica by the end of our fiscal year, which is March 2006," Davis said.  "We have every intention of meeting that goal."

Earlier, Magnus Johansson, C&WJ's vice-president for broadband, told the Observer that the company currently has 13,000 broadband subscribers.  "That's up from 2,300 in September last year," he said.

According to Johansson, C&WJ activated 190 new high speed Internet accounts in September last year and the number has been steadily rising each month.  "Last month it was close to 3,000," he said.

"The demand is there," he said.  "Now we need to move to where people are, and that is our build out strategy to 80 per cent of our exchanges this year."

This was confirmed by Davis in his address.  He said that the project would be implemented on a phased basis and that the company expected to reach the target within the next three months.

"It is our intention that everyone who is able and willing, should have access to affordable broadband in Jamaica," he said.

Davis extolled the benefits of the high speed technology, giving as an example its ability to allow users to browse the web at speeds as high as two megabytes per second.

"For anyone who might not grasp what this means, let me put it this way: if a dial-up connection is a bicycle, then broadband is a Ferrari," he said.

C&WJ literature promoting the service describe it as 30 times faster than dial-up Internet.  It also allows users to stay on-line while using the same telephone line for voice or fax calls.  In addition, one high speed connection can be shared among multiple computers.

It was obvious, though, that C&WJ intends to heavily market the service's flat fee feature.  Said Davis: "The fixed-cost nature of broadband will allow consumers to better manage their planned monthly expenditures for telecommunications, while increasing their ability to take advantage of the service."

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20050710T210000-0500_83967_OBS_C_WJ_CHOPS_HIGH_SPEED_INTERNET_PRICES.asp