Ian Neita

Telecommunications service provider, Cable & Wireless Jamaica, recently signed agreements that will allow its GSM mobile customers to roam in some twenty countries - in North America, Europe and the Caribbean.

C&W already has agreements allowing users of its older mobile network TDMA phones to roam. With the latest agreement, both GSM and TDMA cell phone users will be online seamlessly once they are within the jurisdictions where C&W has agreement.

C&W says that the partnership is with some of the leading providers of mobile services in international markets, including Vodafone, AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile, Rogers Wireless, Swisscomm Mobile and Bouygues Telecom.

Ian Neita, C&W's senior vice president with responsibility for Mobile Services says that a special feature of his company's mobile roaming service is a flat per minute call rate which is applicable throughout most English-speaking Caribbean islands.

However, one limitation of the system that C&W says it plans to address, is the current inability of customers to use mobile Internet and picture services outside Jamaica.

"Cable & Wireless plans to introduce an international data roaming capability in the very near future using its GPRS (Global Packet Radio System) platform," said Neita in a press statement on Friday. "(We) will expand GSM roaming capabilities with other English-speaking Caribbean islands when they commission their GSM networks," he said.

C&W launched its new GSM network in July 2003 having invested some US$60 million.

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