The Digicel Group yesterday announced the continuing expansion of its mobile technology product line and customer services with a raft of first-to-market mobile technology innovations such as the Blackberry Curve, Vehicle Tracking in Jamaica, Diaspora Services and CDMA Roaming in the Caribbean.
In recent months, Digicel has been first-to-market with the launch of several new, exciting products and services, a news release from the company stated.
Digicel stated that it 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 BlackBerry e-mail and messaging experience with premium phone features, powerful web browsing and advanced multimedia capabilities, the release said.
The smartphone includes RIM’s intuitive trackball navigation system, a two mega-pixel camera, enhanced media player and high-performance browser in a smooth and friendly design.
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. Developed in partnership with KingAlarm Systems, Jamaica’s largest electronic security service company, the Digicel Vehicle Tracking system is a web application service that runs on Digicel’s nationwide GPRS/GSM network. 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.
According to the release, significant inroads were made this year 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 Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad, and OECS markets. Credit is instantly applied to the prepaid customers account and the beneficiary is notified via text message. To facilitate this service and the sale of phones for Haiti, Digicel has signed partnership agreements with leading money transfer companies including Caribbean Air Mail (CAM) and UniTransfer.
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. Digicel’s CDMA roaming allows customers travelling to the Caribbean to roam on the company’s seamless mobile network.
CDMA roaming is available in five of Digicel’s 22 markets, namely Jamaica, Bermuda, Aruba, Cayman Islands and Barbados. The company has roaming agreements with 275 partners in 150 countries worldwide.
The release said further that with Digicel’s successful launch of its Personal Broadband Service in the Cayman Islands on September 27, the company is pioneering what it calls a “a true IEEE Standard 802.16e ready Mobile WiMAX
