Dig­i­cel has agreed to abol­ish roam­ing charges for users of the com­pa­ny's net­works when they trav­el in the re­gion from Oc­to­ber 1, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued last night by Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union pres­i­dent Phillip Paulwell.Paulwell made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) Caribbean Min­is­te­r­i­al Fo­rum on ICT, which opened in Port-of-Spain.

"Af­ter some ne­go­ti­a­tion, Dig­i­cel has agreed as of Oc­to­ber 1, 2013, on the abo­li­tion of voice roam­ing on Dig­i­cel's net­work in Cari­com coun­tries. Each trav­el­ling sub­scriber will be treat­ed as if he is us­ing his lo­cal/do­mes­tic Dig­i­cel net­work through­out the re­gion and there­fore will be billed ac­cord­ing­ly," said Paulwell, who is Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­er­gy and Min­ing.

Paulwell said ne­go­ti­a­tions would con­tin­ue with Dig­i­cel for the abo­li­tion of roam­ing on da­ta charges by year-end and for the re­moval of tax­es on in­ter­na­tion­al calls in Ja­maica and Haiti.Dis­cus­sions with LIME, the re­gion's oth­er ma­jor tele­coms provider, on a plan for LIME to elim­i­nate roam­ing charges were on­go­ing, said Paulwell.

"The over­all aim is to abol­ish roam­ing for both voice and da­ta, and the ob­jec­tive is to achieve this by year end. Those charges hin­der af­ford­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Caribbean peo­ple, and as we move to­ward greater re­gion­al uni­ty, we must take every op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­move the bar­ri­er that keep us apart," said Paulwell.