PM Urges Speedier Change to Digital Telecoms System

The Prime Minister, the Hon Bruce Golding, has said that Jamaica needs to accelerate the national switchover to a digital telecommunications system to boost education and investment.
Speaking at the official opening of the Spectrum Management Authority’s (SMA) office on Harbour Street, downtown Kingston on Thursday (February 18), Mr Golding said that a digital switchover would make more frequencies available for more telecoms licensees.
“We need to move urgently to do the switchover to a digital system,” Mr. Golding said, explaining that a national steering committee, chaired by Minister responsible for Telecommunications, Hon Daryl Vaz, and including a number of private sector stakeholders, had been established to work through all the issues.
“The implications are that Jamaica will enjoy significant expansion of telecommunication capabilities,” the Prime Minister explained.
Turning to the impact on education, Mr. Golding said Jamaican children display no inertia to technology, and IT provides an opportunity to make the whole process of education much friendlier.
“It has tremendous potential for institutional learning and for improving businesses..we are looking at a whole horizon of opportunities that would not have existed before. It is a tool of transformation,” he said.
The Spectrum Management Authority is the national regulator for the radio frequency spectrum and, as such, is an advisory body to the Minister with responsibility for telecommunications who has the responsibility for the regulation of the spectrum under the Telecommunications Act, 2000.