Dwayne: Excellent points.

I do concur that the benefits to MVNOs in Jamaica might not necessarily be clear. We can only hope that the GoJ and OUR present options that not only make take up of those licences attractive, but more importantly, will have some impact on competition and on the Jamaican telecoms sector as a whole.

A good read – I have a few thoughts on it.

Agreed, job cuts are inevitable at LIME/FLOW – there will be significant overlap of systems and people in the OSS/BSS space and further in overall/commercial leadership, particularly on the Fixed and ICT sides of their business.

With regard to Jamaica, I’m very interested to see how this MVNO idea plays out; though admittedly, I’m sceptical that even 25% of these MVNO licenses will be taken up. The GoJ and OUR have taken steps to make the Telco space more palatable to potential entrants – reduction of the Mobile Termination Rate (MTR) and introduction of Local Number Portability (LNP); however, any new entrant relying on the operators in this duopoly market will need significant regulatory support in ensuring that favourable terms are agreed with either LIME or Digicel – it is to neither’s advantage to express goodwill towards new entrants.

I would be interested to understand which MVNO model (http://veridian.ro/aboutmvno/mvno-operational-models/?lang=en) the GoJ and OUR believe would be most viable for potential MVNOs. A Thin MVNO – effectively just a marketing and sales would be the easiest and fastest to become operational; however, since all technical and operational (non-marketing and sales) activities would be undertaken by the existing operators (LIME and Digicel) – the interconnection/joining service cost would expected to high; added to that the interconnection costs for off-net calls. On the other end – the MVNO could deploy the typical telco infrastructure save the RAN; however, that would be at significant upfront costs – I simply don’t see potential investors risking their capital in such a highly concentrated mobile market and in a country with mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants exceeding 100 (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/jamaica/mobile-cellular-subscriptions-per-100-people-wb-data.html).
There are still underserved markets around the globe to invest ones telco capital.
Further, what will prevent an MVNO from being gobbled up/acquired by one the major players.
That said – I hold little hope for potential job creation in Jamaica coming via MVNOs.

Regarding BPOs – on the positive, should MVNO’s explode in the region, these MVNOs could choose to remain lean and outsource most of the non-technical/core operations to BPOs growing this sector and potentially giving jobs to displaced employees from the major Telcos.

I concur that new service offerings provide opportunities for job creation, in fact I contend that it offers the greatest opportunity of the three areas outlined. Telcos’ creation of services around the Internet of Things (IoT) – logistics, remote sensors, predictive situation alerts…etc. is one opportunity; another is mobile money and banking. These two areas require dynamic and creative thinkers to develop and drive their use – thus offering new opportunities for employment.

My 2 Cents