The whispers have been growing louder. Digicel fast becoming the old Cable & Wireless? The Irish-owned Digicel now the fastest growing mobile phone provider in the Caribbean region and the number one is or three major players in the Jamaican market with over a million subscribers. It's gone into Latin America, the south Pacific with an agresssive push to grow from it's curreny 20 country coverage to 35. And they jumpstarted things in Jamaica.
They came into the market fiver years ago, after a 50 year hunger and resentment had built up in Jamaica for the long time monopoly Cable & Wireless. Jamaicans had resigned themselves to higher than necessary prices especially for international call service,outrageously bad customer service and a waiting list for a simple landline.
Digicel became the upsetter that put cheap prepaid cellphones in the hands of many Jamaicans, did so while partying with them, engaging them with competitions, rewards, innovattions,sports and community involvement and participatory entertainment like Rising Stars their live televised talent search modeled off American Idol. But most of all great customer service and throught it's distribution network gave many Jamaicans a new revenue stream.After becoming profitable in half the time slated in their business plan, Digicel as since been on an aggressive growth push. They now are operating in 20 Caribbean countries, Fiji in the South Pacific, heading into Central America and there are strong rumours of them entering the American market before 2006 ends. They more than anyone or anything else has turned Cable & Wireless into a discount mobile service - they have been dropping prices on many services to shore up market share and wow are they giving things away too.
All that to say this...have they become the Old Cable & Wireless? Without question their customer service is exceptional and God knows those two words customer and service are still not a common feature in our general business culture here. But there has been consistent rumours of them using their market muscle to muzzle smaller businesses in for example the mobile marketing sub industry.
Now let's not be naive, when you have muscle most people tend to use it,but when it's stiffling or controling the growth of sub telecom industries, keeping new and innovative services from customers, shouldn't we all have a problem with it? Or does the market wait until technology once again levels the playing field and make companies that used to be dominant, submissive or just more pliable.
