'Full mobile penetration by 2016' says Lime

June 10, 2014•1 Minutes
RTC Director RTC Director

Telecommunications provider LIME aims to get the entire population using Internet on their mobile phone within two years. 

That would require well over a million new users and a similar number of web-enabled phones to be sold into the market by 2016.

Mobile data subscribers totalled 780,000 towards the end of 2013, according to the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

LIME’s target is much loftier than a more conservative projection made last month by rival Digicel, which expects half the population to get online by year-end.

Still that would put the total number of mobile data subscribers at 1.4 million. In other words, the larger of the two telecoms expects data subscription growth 80 per cent this year.

Higher penetration would allow both providers to earn greater income from data in a market characterised by an over 66 per cent slash in voice call rates in 12 months.

Telecommunications players have committed investments at over $14 billion in mobile infrastructure in anticipation of increased demand from consumers.