This is why I've said elsewhere that I am not loyal to any of these companies. While they do have technological advances (sometimes) behind them, the main thing is to make money. How they do this is by taking the stance that TOJ/JTC/CWJ has always taken: milk the customers for all they can get. Can they provide better service, why should they bother when they can only make partial improvements in the guise of "advancement" to keep their customer-base?
When CWJ became LIME and had far higher rates than everyone else, they were still holding a large portion of the market. When they suddenly dropped the rates down to $2.99 (with some rates now at $1.99) the company tried to push attention elsewhere. "The parent company wrote off the multi-billion dollar debt we had" was basically what they said. This means that previously they were operating at a cost to not only make a profit, but to also make payments to the parent company. So dropping the rates by more than half they are still making a profit! There's still a lot of factors to consider.
Do they need to charge as much as they do for calls? No. Why do they do it then? Because plans may be available but you won't be switched to them automatically if they can make more from you on the old plans.
Could some calls (landline to landline) be free? Yes. But there's more money to be made by charging. For the older ones among us, you may recall that calls within the same parish using POTS was free. Only calls to other exchanges would incur costs. Now with a primarily digital network rollout why can't it be free all the time? If you have FLOW to FLOW it is free, but there are some differences and issues where this is concerned. Individuals and businesses with POTS switching to HFC and porting have MAJOR issues. Let's not get into that - another thesis for that alone.
Could data be more affordable? Yes. Why not then? Because they can make more from you being satisfied with what you have. At least 6 years ago I spoke with persons in FLOW to lobby for higher upload speeds for gamers/streamers that need higher upload bandwidth. Nothing in that light to date. And correct me if I'm wrong, but DIGICEL doesn't have fiber coming out of Jamaica - they're renting from FLOW and charging you less money for better bandwidth overall. What FLOW does - and won't admit - is cripple the DIGICEL subscribers by increasing their latency. It doesn't matter at times due to the huge pipe they have, but if you play games then your latency matters.
Anyways. Enough of my ranting. LTE is here. It's better with FLOW at current. Digicel has done a FLOW in their approach, but FLOW is a bigger company and can withstand more stuff. Try to call Digicel customer care these days - you'll see what I'm talking about. Even though FLOW has no customer service, at least they still have humans and a way that you can speak to one.
Knowing the solution doesn't mean knowing the method. Yet answering correctly and regurgitation are considered "learning" and "knowledge".