David Hall (left) chief executive officer of Digicel Jamaica is caught in a tête-à-tête with Rodney Davis, the recently named CEO of Cable & Wireless Jamaica, the fierce and at times bitter rival of Digicel. They were both attending Monday night's informal dinner party hosted by the Spanish ambassador to Jamaica, Jesus Silva, in honour of Spanish chef Macarena de Castro and her team who are here to celebrate Spanish culinary week from November 3-5 at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

Cable & Wireless' marketing tactic of calling subscribers of Digicel Jamaica to woo them away with attractive deals has sparked a war of words between the competitors, with Digicel publicly accusing its rival of unethical conduct.

Yesterday, C&W dismissed as unfounded Digicel's claim that it misused the subscriber list which it made available to C&W as part of an information-sharing deal to facilitate calls between the networks.

C&W did not deny calling customers of Digicel to win them over, but said that those telephone numbers were already in the public domain, and calling them did not therefore represent an invasion of the customers' privacy.

"We categorically refute this allegation which we deem to be totally false and baseless," said Rodney Davis, C&W's recently named chief executive officer who, on arriving in Jamaica, promised to take the fight for market share directly to Digicel.

Davis, who previously served at C&W's operation in Barbados, is the third CEO for the Jamaican subsidiary in the four years that Digicel has been operating in the local market.

In full-page advertisements on Sunday, Digicel Jamaica CEO David Hall wrote to customers, expressing concern that the company's rivals were placing unsolicited calls to them with offers of GSM products and services.

"Digicel would like to remind and assure all our customers that your mobile telephone numbers are private and not shared with any other entity for any purpose, including telemarketing and sales campaigns," said Hall.

"The invasion of your privacy by this operator is likely facilitated by their use of numbering information which is normally made available to them so that calls can be made between Digicel's network and their own. They are now taking advantage of their access to this information for their own marketing purposes."

However, yesterday, C&W responded to the accusations, saying that it had taken "legal steps" against its competitor for the public claims.

"I am very disappointed that Digicel has chosen this course of action," noted Davis in his press statement. "It is misleading and quite frankly insulting to the Jamaican people... It is totally false, malicious and, in our opinion, libellous. We don't mind a good fight, but let it be fair and conducted with integrity."

Davis said that C&W's telesales campaign used a predictive dialer to call customers, "based on publicly available number codes" and that "there has been absolutely no breach of OUR regulations or interconnection agreements between the companies".

Added Davis: "When they try to mislead the public by falsely accusing us of abusing the public trust, we believe it is in the public interest that we respond."

Yesterday, Digicel's commercial director Harry Smith charged that C&W's response stemmed from the embarrassment of the issue being made public.

"They were embarrassed by the ads," Smith told the Business Observer. "The fact is, initially complaints trickled in from our customers, but then it increased to uncomfortable levels."

Added Smith: "The customers were concerned that we were sharing their private information with others. So the ad was done to reassure customers that Digicel is not sharing private information on our customers."

Digicel, which is owned by Irish investors, began offering service in Jamaica four years ago, and quickly took away the cellular service market from C&W, which previously held a monopoly in the local market. Digicel says it now has some 1.3 million subscribers compared with just over 600,000 for C&W, and 100,000 by MiPhone, the third cellular service provider.

This is the latest in a dogfight for market share between both companies. Customers, especially those calling overseas, have been the main beneficiaries of this competition which has led to a dramatic fall in the cost of calling abroad, and in a range of other communication services.

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