Jamaican government approves third mobile player

Jamaica’s Finance Minister Audley Shaw says the country’s Cabinet has approved the award of a licence to a new mobile operator, though the applicant has not yet been named, the Jamaica Gleaner writes. Technology Minister Phillip Paulwell said in January that authorities were looking to improve competition in the market by introducing a new player; the sector is currently served by just two players, Digicel and Flow (formerly LIME), with the same two firms dominating the fixed line segment. It has not been revealed whether the new mobile player will be required to roll out its own infrastructure or if it will act as a virtual operator by piggybacking on the two existing networks. Jamaica was home to around three million cellular subscribers at the end of 2015, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.