Patrick King

With thousands of its land line telephone users racking up huge bills which they then refuse to pay, Cable & Wireless (C&W) has tentatively begun to introduce a dollar limit on calls its customers can make, with a full launch of this system set for January next year.

Patrick King, vice-president for residential services at C&W, yesterday confirmed that the limit was already in place for some customers ahead of the full launch of the new practice.

"We will agree to a limit on your domestic and overseas calls and once that limit is exceeded, then your phone will be one-way barred," explained King. A feature of the system, he added, was the issuing of an automatic advisory "once you get to 75 per cent of your limit".

King declined to say how much was owed by customers who, rather than settling the debt, abandon their land line, and opt for a pre-paid cellular phone. Other sources however suggest that thousands of land line customers have gone this route.

Cable and Wireless began implementing the limit at segments where customers "are having difficulties", King told the Business Observer.

The limits are arrived at by calculating the monthly average of a bill, using the last six months as the basis for the average. Then a percentage is added as a buffer. The size of the buffer, said King, depended on factors such as the customer's payment record.

The cost to Cable and Wireless for the non-payment is not only from the loss of the revenue owed by the customers. The company has to pay Digicel Jamaica and Centennial Jamaica interconnectivity fees for calls which originate from C&W's land lines into the systems of the two telecom providers. The interconnectivity fee has to be paid even if C&W's customers fail to settle their bill.

Cable & Wireless plans to promote the toll monitoring system along with the *96 feature, to help subscribers control their bills. The *96 system, which is already in place, will fully replace the ICAS system by January next year. It allows customers to programme their phones to call only specific numbers.

In early April, Courtney Jackson, deputy director of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) -- the agency that regulates C&W -- told the Business Observer that the number of C&W land-based subscribers had dropped by 50,000 from 500,000 to 450,00 since December 2002.

It is not clear how many of these represent those who have racked up huge bills at C&W, then abandon the land line service without settling the debt, and simply switch to a cellular phone.

At the time of liberalisation in March 2000, C&W had undertaken to install 217,000 new lines during the first three years of liberalisation -- based in part on the company's estimated demand for its service.

However, with now only 450,000 lines, there is a 267,000 deficit in the number of land lines that C&W had expected to have in operation.

In 1988, C&W had 88,000 land lines throughout its network. This grew to 510,000 by the end of 1999.

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