On Saturday I wrote about the Jamaica Government establishing a levy on incoming international calls, and blocking several major long distance carriers.

If this is all new news to you, go read the original posting and then come back.

Today I made another round of test calls, and of the affected carriers, only calls made through MCI still fail to go through to Jamaica. I was able to get through tonight using AT&T, and Sprint and British Telecom have been working for over a day now. Callers using AT&T, Sprint and British Telecom should be able to reach Jamaica normally now. British Telecom used alternate routing to get calls to Jamaica; they have stated they refuse to sign the agreement. It’s not clear what Sprint and AT&T did, but one supposes that they signed the agreement with Jamaica to pay the levy, in the absence of any statement to the contrary.

The Jamaica Observer has a good editorial in their Sunday edition which gives the background of the situation.