SEAMUS LYNCH...OUR rejected request for continuous number block

Cable & Wireless and Digicel Jamaica are both pointing fingers at the regulator for the jump in cellular bills, and flood of complaints from customers who charge that they are no longer able to determine which cellular network they are dialling into.

The confusion has arisen because Digicel phones which were once ascribed numbers beginning with (3) or (4), now have numbers beginning with (8), making them indistinguishable from C&W numbers.

It costs up to $16 per minute to dial from a Digicel phone to a C&W customer and vice versa, compared with $7 per minute within the same network.

"Quite a number of our customers have complained to us," says Camille Facey, senior vice president of legal, regulatory and public policy at C&WJ. "They are no longer able to differentiate between C&WJ and Digicel numbers."

The numbers for the three cellular providers --C&W, Digicel and Centennial -- are assigned by the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR), the regulatory body for the utilities. C&W and Digicel say that it is this office which has fouled up in its number allocation mechanism.

"We proposed to the OUR that they go with continuous number blocks for each operator, so that customers identify the mobile service, but it was rejected," charged Seamus Lynch, head of Digicel Jamaica. "The OUR has prevented number branding...We want to have our own numbers and be identified by our own number range."

Yesterday a source at the OUR told the Business Observer that given the large number of cell lines, each operating with seven-digit combination of numbers, it was statistically impossible to grant each phone company with continuous blocks of numbers.

"It would be impossible for there to be complete separation, the numbers would be exhausted very quickly," the source explained.

Apparently one solution being explored is to create a voice alert which would indicate to callers, once they are placing a call outside their own network. The caller could then be in a position to decide whether to proceed with the call, and how much time to spend.

Facey told the Business Observer that C&WJ had approached the OUR on behalf of the affected customers, but that those efforts had been futile. "We mentioned the client's difficulty to the OUR. The consumer needs the right to choose," she asserted. "They (the OUR) are the ones who assign the number ranges, so we have no control."

The problem has arisen in part because of the rapid increase in cellular usage in Jamaica, and the restriction created by having to allocate seven-digit numbers among three cellular providers.

Since inception in April last year, Digicel's customer base has grown to 350,000, with Cable and Wireless having a similar number. Centennial has about 50,000 customers.

At the same time, there are also some 400,000 land lines in usage.

The OUR source acknowledged that the confusion would worsen if the government succeeded in selling another licence for the entry of another cellular service provider into the Jamaican market.

"Unfortunately, the varying rates amongst the mobile providers has served to heighten the problem," he said.

Even without the numbers being as indistinguishable as they now are, Cable and Wireless customers have for a long time been complaining about the high cost of their bills -- apparently unaware that they have been calling outside the network, and at much higher costs per minute.

To minimise this problem, C&W has in the past routinely included an advisory in its customers' telephone bills, warning them of the high cost of dialling outside the network. The company has pointed to the fact that the numbers for Digicel were easily identified because they started with (3) or (4). That, however, is no longer the case.

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