Stage 3 - Telecommunications Regulation

Telecommunication operations have been regulated by The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) since January 1997, which was established by an Act of Parliament in 1995.  OUR’s role as an independent, objective, and impartial regulator is to regulate specified services and facilities, receive and process applications for licenses and promote the interest of customers.  It also provides an opportunity of appeal for consumers who have grievances with utility companies.

Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR):

Legislation Timeline:
Mar 03, 2000 - Telecommunications Act 2000
Nov 28, 2001 - Modifications to RIO-3 - Determination Notice
Feb 20, 2002 - The Interception Of Communication Act (Act 5)
Sep 11, 2003 - OUR's Quarterly Information Requirements - Fixed Network Operators and Service Providers
Dec 21, 2006 - The Electronic Transaction Act (Act 15)
Apr 15, 2010 - THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT: The Telecommunications (Forms) Regulations
May 24, 2012 - Amendment to the Telecoms (Act 1)

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Policies

Jamaica currently has an advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Strategy. In 2001, a publicly owned company called the Central Information Technology Office (CITO) was established by the Government of Jamaica to formulate, update, coordinate and monitor implementation of the National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Strategy.  Once created and implemented, this became the main policy document, which reinforces development in the e-government and will ultimately set out a blueprint for e-powering Jamaica. The CITO reports directly to the Information Sub-Committee of Cabinet through the Minister of Energy, Mining, and Telecommunications. The organization is governed by a board of directors on which its Chief Executive Officer sits.  Below are CITO’s vision and mission statements:

CITO Vision
CITO will lead in establishing a world-class national ICT sector that will foster Jamaica becoming the most developed knowledge-based society in the region

CITO Mission
CITO's mandate is to contribute to the increase of national wealth and the e-Powering of Jamaica by means of an effective National ICT Strategic Plan that will facilitate the development of an efficient and integrated public sector and national ICT environment, and increased capacity and capability of our people to leverage the opportunities that ICT gives rise to across the global economy.

CITO will also provide ICT standards and policy advice, ICT project support and governance leadership to the public sector through our competent staff working in a collaborative, communicative, facilitative, flexible, performance-driven manner to achieve our goals across the government and the nation.

The integration of a national ICT strategy overlaps across the policy fields of technology, industry, telecommunications, and media.  In the absence of an existing national ICT policy it is apparent that policies have become rooted by sectors that only address their own needs.  Unfortunately, this will provide many difficulties when integrating them into a broad all-encompassing ICT policy.  Therefore, since interdependence of ICT overall policies and sectoral policies is continuously growing, the execution of policies is even more dependent on the success of the public sector’s involvement in development and implementation of the policy process.  With the development of the E-Powering Jamaica 2012 and the Vision 2030 initiatives, a plan for mitigation of these potential threats to successful policy integration has been applied.

As the ICT Policy environment had matured considerably since the liberalization of telecommunications in 2001, the newest goal in 2007 was to achieve a greater confidence in the conduct of digital transactions.  The focus was to improve access to the ICT networks with affordable pricing, in order to generate more activity for education, business development, and public administration by the year 2012.  The NICT Strategy benchmarked against ICT policies and strategies in 9 other countries at different stages of development.  It also analyzed the approaches recommended in major multilateral organizations such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC), the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and UNESCO. 

Table 1. below indicates the Legislative and Policy Framework of the E-Powering Policy.