Dear Editor:
After reading your interesting Starlink article on Christmas Eve (‘Musk celebrates as Starlink awarded Cayman’s first satellite licence’), I spent Christmas Day researching Cayman’s internet pricing.
I know – I clearly need to get out more. But what I found was striking enough that my New Year’s resolution became to try to do something about how Caymanians are being overcharged.
I’ve therefore written to OfReg asking them to mandate affordable basic internet tiers and I’ve written to Logic suggesting that they create such a tier voluntarily.
I’m also raising this publicly because Caymanians should know what they’re paying compared to the rest of the world. In summary, Caymanians pay up to seven times more for basic internet access than people in the UK.
Between 2014-2019, I worked at British Telecom in London – in their legal department handling competition matters, in their consumer division on pricing strategy and managing commercial operations. I therefore have some sense of what telecommunications actually cost to deliver.
The telecoms industry’s dirty little secret is that once fibre infrastructure is installed, the incremental cost of providing higher speeds is negligible. Whether a fibre connection delivers 30Mbps or 300Mbps, the infrastructure cost is identical. The expensive part is the initial build: cables on poles. After that, data costs are minimal. This is why UK providers offer basic broadband for £12/month and still profit.
What doesn’t add up in Cayman: If Starlink can operate at CI$90/month via satellite – which requires maintaining orbital constellations, launching replacement satellites and operating ground stations (to receive the satellite signals) – why can’t terrestrial providers offer a basic 30Mbps tier at CI$30/month? Their infrastructure is already paid for. That speed handles email, web browsing, video calls and streaming perfectly well for most households.
Why I’m speaking up: I’m only here on a work permit, so I don’t want to be presumptuous. However, I’m raising this because it affects all families on modest incomes who are genuinely priced out of internet access, with real consequences for their children’s education and job prospects.
A quick win for the NCFC: The National Coalition for Caymanians formed a government following the April 2025 election with a mandate to address cost of living. Requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer basic tiers (30Mbps @ CI$30/month) would be an achievable quick win:
• Immediate savings: CI$700+/year for affected households.
• No taxpayer/CIG money required – pure regulatory action.
• Better access to education, jobs and services.
The timing is particularly apt. ISPs are suing the Cayman Islands government to reclaim fees allegedly collected without proper authority since 2003. The litigation is contested (including Cayman Islands government appeals and validation legislation), but if ISPs ultimately receive refunds, shouldn’t those savings reach the consumers who bore the costs?
My personal experience: In November 2022, Logic emailed announcing they were “upgrading” me from 20Mbps to 100Mbps and raising my price. I replied immediately, politely declining. Logic ignored me and implemented the increase anyway. This unilateral ratcheting of prices – using unsolicited and unnecessary speed increases as an excuse – is only possible when providers know customers have nowhere else to go.
What happens next: I’ve done what I can – submitted my request to OfReg and raised it publicly here. I now respectfully leave this in the hands of OfReg and CIG – and your team at the Compass. Either I’m mistaken about the economics (and I welcome being corrected), or this is a genuine market failure that regulatory intervention could fix. I respectfully submit that Caymanians who share these concerns may wish to make their voices heard with OfReg and their representatives, and in your pages. Sometimes markets need regulatory intervention. This may be one of those times.
Ross McLeod
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