One of those competitors, LaqTel Ltd, as well as Digicel, earlier this year secured the two mobile licences auctioned by the T&T government.  The third licence is held by the quasi-sate-run telecoms, TSTT, a 49/51 partnership between the T&T government and Cable & Wireless Plc.  That firm is the current monopoly service provider.

LaqTel's founder and principal shareholder Dr Joseph Laquis, says he will first Digicel to the market, and as such gain the upper hand - in much the same way as Digicel had beaten MiPhone to the market in Jamaica after they both secured their licences in 2001.

"Digicel will not launch one day before us," declares Laquis, a former parliamentarian in the twin island republic.  "They will not have the advantage of entering the market first."  Laquis has a three-month time table for rolling out his service in that market.

Digicel Group paid nearly US$15.8 million for five blocks of bandwidth, while LaqTel paid US$9.3 million for three blocks.

Unlike Laquis, Digicel Group CEO Colm Delves, was unable to offer a time frame for the roll-out of services, but stressed that his company had already started to lay down the infrastructure.

"Digicel has indeed deployed teams into our new market opportunities," Delves told the Business Observer.  "We are at an early stage of roll-out given the relatively short period that has passed following the announcements and a lot of work has to be done in the meantime including roll-out of the networks and interconnection with the incumbents."

Digicel apparently believes that superior coverage and service would compensate for coming to the market behind its competitor.  Noted Delves: "In relation to coverage and quality commitments, Digicel has a consistent strategy of providing the best coverage and quality in each of our markets compared with the existing providers and we are committed to providing this in our new markets."

LaqTel began its roll out programme three weeks ago having signed a contract with communications technology provider Nortel to build a 3G wireless network for nationwide delivery of mobile broadband services.  The contract is worth about US$50 million (J$3.1 billion).

This along with an aggressive pre-emptive strike by the current monopoly, which will spend an estimated US$50 million over the next two years to expand and upgrade its GSM/GPRS wireless networks, has shaped the competitive environment that Digicel will face.  It would be different from Jamaica's when for about a year, Digicel was the only competitor to Cable and Wireless.

According to Laquis, the company is now awaiting governmental plans for co-location of towers, and the completion of negotiations for interconnectivity with TSTT - a process that he estimates "should take two to three months, by which time LaqTel should be able to provide services".

Last week Friday, the company was expected to have concluded a deal with Saskatchewan Telecommunications International (SaskTel) in which the Canadians would build and operate for three years, its code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular network, then fully handing over the technology.

CDMA is considered to be third generation (3G) technology that was developed by the US military in 1995 to have high security characteristics among other features.  Over the last decade, CDMA has surpassed other technology used by mobile providers in the US, Australia and several Asian countries, a factor which Laquis told the Business Observer, helped determine the choice for its use in Trinidad.

"The World Cup [cricket] in 2007 will have hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Caribbean with their CDMA phones to roam," Laquis said.  "LaqTel will be sure to provide them with this service."

CDMA technology is also used by Oceanic Digital Jamaica Limited operating under the brand name MiPhone, which launched its commercial wireless service in November 2001, and currently provides island wide services to approximately 100,000 subscribers through 73 cellular sites.

Over the next six months, Laquis plans on entering Barbados and Antigua to provide mobile services.  T&T has an estimated 700,000 cell phone subscriber - about a third of Jamaica's - and is expected to grow to 1.2 million within the next two years.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20050809T200000-0500_85764_OBS_T_T_FIRM_VOWS_TO_WHIP_DIGICEL.asp