Jamaican Operator to Adopt Claro Brand

Jamaican mobile operator, MiPhone is to rebrand as Claro from Thursday this week - matching the branding from its parent company, America Movil. Oceanic Digital Jamaica, the parent company of MiPhone was brought by America Movil last year for US$70 million.

"We are pretty excited. What we're doing right now is relaunching the brand and you'll start seeing the stores changing and you'll start seeing killer products like the new Apple iPhone next month. The plan right now is to announce to Jamaica that we're changing from MiPhone to Claro," MiPhone marketing manager Noel Esty told the Business Observer.

Estimates from the Mobile World for the end of the first half of this year report that Digicel is currently the largest mobile operator in Jamaica, with an estimated 1.92 million subscribers. Former incumbent operator C&W has around 657,000 customers - but this is hampered by the fact that 251,000 of its customers are still using two legacy AMPS and TDMA networks. MiPhone, which is currently a CDMA operator and plans to build a GSM overlay network trails with 238,000 subscribers.

Oceanic Digital also delivers voice and data communications to subscribers in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

On the web: Mobile World - Business Observer

Posted to the site on 8th October 2008