Claro invests J$26b to grow market share
Published:Friday | June 11, 2010 | 12:00 AM
In a move that could be a game-changer in the local mobile telephone business, Claro, Jamaica, the most recent entrant in the highly competitive telecoms market, has announced that it will be investing US$300 million, or more than J$26 billion, over the next 12 months to boost its network capacity.
Claro plans, through the hefty investment, to grab another 20 per cent share of the market held largely by rival Digicel.
The firm, which is ultimately owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu's America Movil (AMX), spent a similar figure transforming the network it bought three years ago to a third-generation (3G) platform, the latest mobile technology on the market.
"While there are areas we had identified as priority, because of the rapid growth of our network, our focus will be to boost our network capacity throughout the 14 parishes, in order to maintain a highly consistent standard," Joseph Oates, the marketing manager at Claro told the Financial Gleaner.
"As our 'subscribership' grows at record levels, we want to ensure that the necessary capacity is always available to meet demand," the company said in a statement to the media.
Claro has made no secret of its quest to dethrone mobile giant Digicel by 2012.
"We are not only looking to provide the best quality products at the most affordable prices for our customers, but we also want to ensure that as the company expands across the island, we also provide well-needed jobs for the people in and around those locations," the statement quoted Oates.
Significant feature
One significant feature of the investment roll-out is acquiring the necessary approvals from the planning authorities to erect and commission additional signal transmission towers in areas where the company's service requires strengthening
In the past, Claro has had run-ins with local authorities over its tower construction activities.
The company, with its tower-sharing deal with rival LIME, now has about 500 transmission towers across the country. The project is said to be still in its roll-out phase, but Claro said its plan for this year calls for a one-fifth increase in network size in terms of the number of towers.
Claro entered the Jamaican market in August 2007, when AMX acquiring Oceanic Digital Jamaica which operated the MiPhone brand here. It has put its customer base at 400,000.
There is no independent verification of subscriber numbers, but Claro's claim places it at number three behind Digicel with 2,000,000 and LIME with a 700,000 mobile-user claim. However, Claro has argued that subscriber base should be calculated based on current users and not purchasers of sim cards, which would place them in the number-two spot.
Claro is the largest mobile-phone network in the Americas, with around 160 million customers.