Minister for Information, Science, Telecommunications and Technology, Kelver Darroux has announced that the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) Council of Ministers is looking closely at the possibility of eliminating roaming charges within the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
The Minister made that announcement while addressing the launch ceremony of free WiFi access at the Botanical Gardens on Wednesday.
According to him the council have already engaged a consultant on the matter and hopefully by 2016 a final decision will be made.
“At the 32nd meeting of ECTEL just last week in St Kitts, the ECTEL Council of Ministers, we are looking very much closely at the possibility to totally eliminate roaming charges within the OECS territories and that is very important,” Darroux said. “Just this weeks a news item came out that countries within the European Union … they are looking to have roaming rates to totally eliminated by 2017.”
Darroux stated further that the elimination of roaming charges will allow telephone customers to save tremendously when travelling in countries within the OECS territories.
“We can well anticipate the high costs that are associated with downloading a file, with opening an email, with making a call, receiving a call when you travel out of Dominica, just there to St Lucia or to Antigua,” he noted.
ECTEL promotes market liberalization and open entry within the telecommunication sector as well as formulate harmonizes polices at a regional level and to establish fair pricing and the use of cost-based pricing among telecommunication providers.
The OECS is a nine-member grouping comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla, Martinique and the British Virgin Islands are associate members of the OECS.
The foundations for development: Transportation, Communication & innovation. The ability to communicate more and freely amongst regional countries, businesses and customers far surpasses the transportation issues and can allow for more innovation as ideas are shared freely without penalty of cost!
Surely that sounds convenient, but nothing is free. If roaming rates are eliminated, does that mean higher rates overall to make up for it? If not, are we saying that mobile providers will just meekly accept lower revenues?
I’m not saying I’m against it, maybe all of the numbers together make a lot of sense. I’m just saying that when making a decision, one should consider not only the obvious benefit but also whatever consequences may be hiding behind it.
If within the same network (provider) the elimination is very possible.
The part that needs to be carefully studied would be the implications for cross network access. For example what would be the scenario if a flow/lime customer calls a digicel customer….
Just thinking…………
The EU has decided to do that already so why can’t we, at least in the Caricom community. We don’t always have run behind.
Yeeeessss!!! twenty times yesssss…it’s really time for those phone companies to get with the programme. Because Whatsapp will run them out of existence if they not careful.