Telecommunications in Jamaica include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.

Radio and television

Radio stations Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio sta ...

: Privately owned Radio Jamaica Limited and its subsidiaries operate multiple radio stations; there are roughly 70 other privately owned radio stations (2007)."Jamaica"
''World Factbook'', U.S. Central Agency, 7 January 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2014. *

Radios Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

: 1.215 million (1997). *

Television stations A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ear ...

: Privately owned Radio Jamaica Limited and its subsidiaries operate multiple TV stations as well as subscription cable services; there are 2 other privately owned television stations (2007). *

Television set A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...

s: 460,000 (1997).

Telecommunications

Country Code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

: +1-876, +1-658

International Call Prefix An international call prefix, international dial-out code or international direct dial code (IDD code) is a trunk prefix that indicates an international phone call. In the dialling sequence, the prefix precedes the country calling code (and, fur ...

: 011 (outside NANP) Calls from Jamaica to the US, Canada, and other NANP Caribbean nations, are dialed as 1 + NANP area code + 7-digit number. Calls from Jamaica to non-NANP countries are dialed as 011 + country code + phone number with local area code. Number Format: nxx-xxxx * Main lines: 265,000 lines in use, 123rd in the world (2011). * Mobile cellular: 2.7 million, 135th in the world (2012). * Telephone system: Fully automatic domestic telephone network; the 1999 agreement to open the market for telecommunications services resulted in rapid growth in mobile-cellular telephone usage while the number of fixed-lines in use declined (2011). * Teledensity: 110 per 100 persons (combined) (2011). * Satellite earth stations: 2 Intelsat (

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

) (2010). * Communication cables: Fibralink submarine cable links to the Americas Region Caribbean Ring System (ARCOS-1) submarine cable in the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

and on to the US, parts of the Caribbean, Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

; the ALBA-1 fiber-optic submarine cable links Jamaica,

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, and

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

(2010). Jamaica has a fully digital telephone communication system.Doing eBusiness in Jamaica
The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Mobile Telephony

The country's three mobile operators – Cable and Wireless (once marketed as LIME – Landline, Internet, Mobile and Entertainment now named FLOW),

Digicel Digicel is a Jamaican and Caribbean mobile phone network and home entertainment provider operating in 33 markets worldwide. Digicel has operated in several countries, including Guyana, Fiji, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, Suriname, a ...

, and at one point Oceanic Digital (operating as

MiPhone Claro Company is a Mexican company part of América Móvil, a Mexican telecom group. Claro serves clients in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Par ...

and now known as Claro since late 2008) until the carrier was acquired and the relevant spectrum sold to Digicel – have spent millions in network upgrade and expansion. Both Digicel and Oceanic Digital were granted licences in 2001 to operate mobile services in the newly liberalised telecom market that had once been the sole domain of the incumbent Cable and Wireless monopoly. Digicel opted for the more widely used

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

wireless system, while Oceanic opted for the

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...

standard. Cable and Wireless, which had begun with TDMA standard, subsequently upgraded to GSM, and currently utilises both standards on its network. With wireless usage increasing,

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

s supplied by Cable and Wireless have declined from just over half a million to roughly about three hundred thousand as of 2006. In a bid to grab more market share, Cable and Wireless recently launched a new land line service called HomeFone Prepaid that would allow customers to pay for minutes they use rather than pay a set monthly fee for service, much like prepaid wireless service. Two more licenses were auctioned by the Jamaican government to provide mobile services on the island, including one that was previously owned by

AT&T Wireless AT&T Mobility LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and Trade name, marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, AT&T Inc. and provides wireless services in the United States. AT&T Mobi ...

but never utilized, and one new license. Another entrant to the Jamaican communications market, FLOW, laid a new

submarine cable Submarine cable is any electrical cable that is laid on the seabed, although the term is often extended to encompass cables laid on the bottom of large freshwater bodies of water. Examples include: *Submarine communications cable *Submarine power ...

connecting Jamaica to the United States. This new cable increases the total number of submarine cables connecting Jamaica to the rest of the world to four. The company's parent was acquired by Cable and Wireless Communications in November 2014 and finalized in March 2015. The new FLOW was re-launched as a successor to LIME and the old Flow on August 31, 2015; offering mobile, fixed voice, fixed broadband and TV services to the market. It has now become the first quad-play provider in Jamaica. The company runs a vast copper network (inherited from LIME) islandwide as well as a Hybrid Fiber and Coaxial network (from the old Flow) in the metropolitan areas of Kingston and Montego Bay. They also have small Fiber-to-the-home operations in certain sections of St. James that began in 2011 (under LIME). On the mobile side, the company had completed its 4G HSPA+ rollout (capable of speeds up to 21 Mbit/s) across the island in November 2015 and has announced plans to move to LTE within the year 2016. However,

has become the first LTE network operator in Jamaica, going live with their network on June 9, 2016.

Internet

* Internet

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

: .jm, registration of .jm domains is handled by MITS at the University of the West Indies, registration is free, although there has been some discussion about MITS making the service commercial in the coming years. *

Internet users The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

: 1.3 million users, 108th in the world; 46.5% of the population, 94th in the world (2012).Calculated using penetration rate and population data fro
"Countries and Areas Ranked by Population: 2012"
, Population data, International Programs, U.S. Census Bureau, retrieved 26 June 2013"Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012"
International Telecommunication Union (Geneva), June 2013, retrieved 22 June 2013 * Fixed broadband: 125,188 subscriptions, 96th in the world; 4.3% of population, 109th in the world (2012)."Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. *

Wireless broadband Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband. The term broadband Originally the word ...

: 45,505 subscriptions, 127th in the world; 1.6% of the population, 128th in the world (2012)."Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012"
Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE,

. Retrieved on 29 June 2013. * Internet hosts: 3,906 hosts, 149th in the world (2012). * IPv4: 202,752 addresses allocated, less than 0.05% of the world total, 70.1 addresses per 1000 people (2012).

Internet censorship and surveillance

There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

or Internet

chat rooms The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

without judicial oversight."Jamaica"
''Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012'', Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 22 March 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2014. The law provides for freedom of speech and

press Press may refer to: Media * Print media or news media, commonly called "the press" * Printing press, commonly called "the press" * Press (newspaper), a list of newspapers * Press TV, an Iranian television network People * Press (surname), a fam ...

, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, generally effective judicial protection, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. The independent media are active and express a wide variety of views without restriction. Broadcast media were largely state owned, but open to pluralistic points of view. Although the constitution prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, in practice the police conduct searches without warrants. A law decriminalizing defamation was passed by the Jamaican House of Representatives in November 2013 after being approved unanimously by the Senate the previous July. It took six years to amend the libel and slander laws, which – although little used – made media offences punishable by imprisonment."Jamaica Country Profile"
, Reporters Without Borders, 13 November 2013. Retrieved 11 January 2014.

References

* *

External links

Mona Information Technology Services
(MITS), University of the West Indies, Jamaica domain names registrar.
Television Jamaica
{{DEFAULTSORT:Telecommunications In Jamaica

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...