LIME Jamaica yesterday strongly denied a news report that British parent company Cable & Wireless (C&W) plc has decided it will shut down its local operation in light of a ‘difficult’ regulatory environment.
“I categorically deny that,” LIME Jamaica Chairman Chris Dehring told Nationwide Radio just minutes after the news station reported that C&W plc last year informed a former Jamaican prime minister that it will pull out of the country if there was no ‘improvement’ in the regulatory environment, and that the merger of Digicel and Claro only accelerated that decision made in London.
“Certainly, as the chairman here at LIME Jamaica, no such decision, to our knowledge, has been reached and we continue to operate,” Dehring said.
While dismissing the reports, however, the LIME chairman acknowledged that the company believes that the current regulatory environment is making it very difficult for the company to operate a viable business.
“We are certainly not shutting down, there’s no intention to shut down, but obviously people are going to have to take a cold hard look sometimes at the economics of it,” Dehring said. “It’s an environment which does not help us and therefore any shareholder will say, ‘listen, we need to invest our funds where we can make a decent return’…We would love to invest more into this country, but we have to know that the playing field is level.”
LIME Jamaica Managing Director Garry Sinclair later issued a statement further dismissing the Nationwide report and seeking to assure the public that LIME is “100 per cent committed to Jamaica”.
“We would like to assure our employees, our loyal customers, our shareholders, our suppliers and the wider public that we remain committed to serving them. It is, therefore, imperative that we are not distracted from the real issues plaguing the country’s telecoms sector,” Sinclair said.
“At this point, Jamaica’s telecoms industry is at a critical juncture as we stand on the verge of seeing meaningful change in the regulatory framework. These changes are necessary to restore competitiveness in the industry, which will bring real value and benefits for Jamaican consumers,” he added, stressing that LIME has been advocating for these regulatory changes for the past six years.
Digicel last year acquired Claro’s Jamaican operations, a deal which allowed the firm to solidify its place atop the local mobile telecommunications sector where it already claims in excess of two million subscribers among the Jamaican population of 2.8 million.
News broke last week that Digicel was granted permission to shut down the Claro network less than four months after agreeing to keep it going under the terms of their merger.
Permission for the network to be switched off was granted by the outgoing Jamaica Labour Party Government before December 8, as the general election campaign was kicking off.
An incensed LIME accused former Prime Minister Andrew Holness of betraying Jamaican consumers when he reversed the requirement that Digicel maintain both networks as a condition of its proposed merger with Claro. At the same time, the firm urged the Government to implement an emergency overhaul of the regulations governing the telecoms industry in order to protect consumers and other service providers
LIME Jamaica reported losses of $6 billion after taxes in its last financial year.
