Digicel Group, a leading mobile telecommunications provider in the Caribbean and new entrant to Central American market, announced on Monday, October 29, that it continues to greatly expand its product portfolio and customer offerings with the introduction of first-to-market mobile technology innovations and services across the region.{{more}}

“Digicel is not only the Caribbean’s leading mobile service provider, but also an innovator in the region. We strive to provide our customers unique and affordable mobile services they can’t get anywhere else,” said Colm Delves, Digicel Group CEO. “By consistently being first to market on a regular basis, Digicel remains the number one brand that truly connects with its customers.”

In recent months, Digicel has been first-to-market with the launch of several new, exciting products and services, including: the Blackberry Curve, Vehicle Tracking in Jamaica, Diaspora Services, CDMA Roaming in Caribbean and WiMAX Wireless Broadband.

Digicel is the first mobile operator in the Caribbean, Bermuda and El Salvador to offer the Blackberry Curve, with Bermuda being the first of Digicel’s markets to make the impressive new smartphone available to customers. The BlackBerry Curve is the smallest and lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry smartphone, yet it delivers the full, renowned BlackBerry e-mail and messaging experience with premium phone features, powerful web browsing and advanced multimedia capabilities.

Vehicle Tracking System

In June 2007, Digicel launched in Jamaica the “Digicel Vehicle Tracking” system, an easy to install GPS device for fleet management companies that tracks the location of vehicles on urban, regional and national travel routes. The new service not only tracks the location of the vehicle anywhere across the country on a 24/7 basis but also provides monthly travel history reports of each installed vehicle and e-mail alerts to notify fleet managers of excessive speeding, ignition on/off, location and arrival and departure times.

Diaspora Services

Significant inroads were made in 2007 in offering services that allow the Caribbean Diaspora to send airtime credit and purchase phones for family and friends in the Caribbean. Digicel’s CaribFlex allows the purchase of airtime credit in the UK, Canada and the US for prepaid customers in Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad, Guyana and OECS markets. Credit is instantly applied to the prepaid customers account and the beneficiary notified via text message.

CDMA Roaming in Caribbean

Digicel, in partnership with Huawei Technologies, became the first GSM operator in the region to simultaneously offer GSM and CDMA on its mobile network. CDMA roaming is available in five of Digicel’s 22 markets, namely Jamaica, Bermuda, Aruba, Cayman Islands and Barbados. Digicel’s CDMA roaming allows customers traveling to the Caribbean to roam on the company’s seamless mobile network. The company has roaming agreements with 275 partners in 150 countries worldwide.

WiMAX Wireless Broadband

With its successful launch of its Personal Broadband Service in the Cayman Islands on September 27th, 2007, Digicel is pioneering a true IEEE Standard 802.16e ready Mobile WiMAX(tm) network in the Caribbean. Mobile WiMAX(tm) is the next generation wireless broadband service which will allow individuals to access the Internet on their terms from anywhere within the coverage area. The company will continue rolling out Personal Broadband Services in other markets deemed viable in the near future.

“Other product highlights of the year to date include the launch of Any Voucher Any Where (where customers can purchase and use local top up vouchers in any of Digicel’s Eastern Caribbean markets), Call Conferencing Services, Credit Me/Credit U (credit can be requested and sent from one phone to another), Dual accounts (simultaneously pre- and postpaid), Pan Caribbean Closed User Groups and Push-to-Talk. And last but not least, we also have the widest selection of top-up methods available in the region,” said Ralf Ohlhausen, Group Products Director.