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Business View Caribbean
“Part of our agreement is to ensure that the country
maximizes the economic benefit of the spectrum. One
part of that is license fees and regulator fees that we
collect from our licensees, but the other way is that
we encourage innovation in new technologies that can
drive economic growth. For example, we’re engaged in
a trial which is jointly run by Microsoft, USAID, NetH-
ope, our parent Ministry, MSET (Ministry of Science,
Energy & Technology) and the local Universal Service
Fund company that generates its revenues from a uni-
versal service levy on incoming calls. And what they
seek to do is to try to use TV frequencies that are not
currently allocated for long-range broadband in rural
areas. The country has significant mountains and
you have populations in the interior that need to be
reached by advanced telecommunications.
“On the regulatory front, there’s currently a new In-
formation and Communications Technology Act being
drafted. This will effectively repeal two Acts: the Tele-
communications Act of 2000, which was amended
in 2012; and the Radio and Telegraph Control Act of
1973. It will modernize the legislation to make it more
relevant to what is happening in the industry, as well
as create a single regulator for the ICT sector.
“Currently, we have three regulators – The Spectrum
Management Authority, which focuses on regulating
spectrum, mainly in the broadcasting and telecom-
munications sectors, among other users; the Office of
Utilities Regulation, one of whose divisions deals with
other telecommunications, such as land lines, as well
as consumer/operator relationships like setting and
regulating tariffs and customer service charges, and
performance criteria for all telecommunication op-
erators; and the Broadcasting Commission that deals
with the electronic media – they license television, ra-
dio, and cable operators, and also regulate content.
So, the goal of the ICT Act is to have a more modern
regulatory regime that is closer to the FCC in the U.S.
or OFCOM in the U.K.”
BVM: When will that new legislation become effec-
tive?
McBean:
“The expectation is that the legislation will be
passed in 2017, and the establishment of the single
ICT regulator will take effect late 2017, or early 2018.”
BVM: How will it affect your agency?
McBean:
“Fundamentally it won’t, as the entire spec-
trum management functions will be required for the
establishment of the single ICT regulator.”
BVM: What else would you like our readers to know
about the Spectrum Management Authority?
McBean:
“We have a proposed three-year expansion
project to modernize our monitoring system across the
entire island. We have a big responsibility to monitor
the spectrum and the very explosive growth that has
been, and will be, in telecommunications, for the fu-
ture. So, our job is to make sure that Jamaica remains
among the leaders in the Caribbean and Latin America
in terms of its telecommunications network and sys-
tems. And we do that by ensuring that we have modern
regulation in tandem with global regulations, because
we don’t make technology in Jamaica, but we certainly
use it.
“We see ourselves as an important part of the eco-
nomic landscape because, as an island, we have to
attract foreign investment. For the last 20 years, a big
selling point for Jamaica is that it has a modern tele-
communications infrastructure, and we regard regu-
