January 2017 | Business View Caribbean

104 105 economic growth. For example, we’re engaged in a trial which is jointly run by Microsoft, US- AID, NetHope, our parent Ministry, MSET (Min- istry of Science, Energy & Technology) and the local Universal Service Fund company that generates its revenues from a universal 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 moun- tains and you have populations in the interior that need to be reached by advanced telecom- munications. “On the regulatory front, there’s currently a new Information and Communications Tech- nology Act being drafted. This will effectively repeal two Acts: the Telecommunications 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 fo- cuses on regulating spectrum, mainly in the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, among other users; the Office of Utilities Regu- lation, 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 tele- communication operators; and the Broadcast- ing Commission that deals with the electronic media – they license television, radio, and cable The SpectrumManagement Authority of Jamaica Jamaican firm, who will be offering broadband LTE (Long-term Evolution) services in the 700 Megahertz band - and that’s a band which has been popular in recent times. They’ll primarily be doing data, so that will make three mobile band operators that we have. We have an es- tablished operator that is also moving onto an LTE network. Both operators have versions of LTE that they are rolling out. It will bring high- speed data to a lot of remote areas. We’ve also seen a sharp rise in people requesting broad- band frequencies for data. “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 licens- ees, but the other way is that we encourage innovation in new technologies that can drive AT A GLANCE The Spectrum Management Authority WHAT: The national regulator for the radio fre- quency spectrum in Jamaica WHERE: Kingston, Jamaica WEBSITE: www.sma.gov.jm