The PCJ building on Trafalgar Road where the OUR has its headquarters.

At least three telecommunications firms operating in Jamaica are seething over the Office of Utilities Regulation's (OUR's) move to regulate quality of service for the sector, and responded to the regulator's consultative documents on the matter with a resounding 'no'.

Columbus Communications, which operates across the island as Flow, asked the OUR to immediately dismiss the proceeding on the grounds that it was unnecessary, costly, and administratively burdensome "without resulting tangible benefits", while mobile provider Digicel went as far as to say that the regulator must have made a mistake in opening the process to bring quality of service standards to the telecommunications sector.

"Digicel assumes that the OUR has mistakenly reached the conclusion that regulation is necessary as it has failed to take proper account of the significant commercial incentives which already exist to secure the provision of a high quality of service," said the Irish-owned telecom in its response to OUR proposals.

Last month, the OUR set out recommended guidelines that would monitor and apply penalties to telecoms that failed to meet them, including setting a maximum number of dropped calls and interruption to Internet service allowed.

But Flow said in its response that the marketplace was "robustly competitive" and thus did not need to be regulated for quality.

"As a general matter, Flow does not agree with respect to consumers that the OUR should be regulating at all quality of service standards. Flow believes that a competitive market self-regulates in this area, which certainly has shown to be the case in the country of Jamaica."

In its conclusion, Digicel said it "would like to reiterate that the OUR has systematically failed to provide any objective evidence of the need for such intervention in the mobile and ISP markets".

As part of its reasoning, Digicel posited that it "already offers an exemplary level of service in the absence of regulation", citing on several occasions in its 23-page submission the lack of consumer complaints on the mobile provider's service.

"The OUR has completely failed to take into account the effectiveness of the current incentives on operators to offer a high level of service in the area of mobile telephony and Internet service provision," said Digicel. "In this regard, we refer the OUR to its own Quarterly Performance Report (April-June 2007)."

The OUR report indicated that, during the quarter, Digicel, which has the largest subscriber base in Jamaica among utilities, only received three contacts - relating to complaints - during the quarter.

"It is important to note that this figure represents zero per cent of contacts as a percentage of Digicel's customer base and that all of these contacts were resolved in the same period. On the basis of the OUR's own figures, it is clear that the perceived customer detriment which is continually referred to as the justification for its intervention is not demonstrated."

Cable and Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ), crafted its response to indicate agreement, generally, with the OUR's proposal, but opted for self-regulation by standards set by itself.

"C&WJ supports the establishment of service standards," said the British-owned telecom. "We, however, are in favour of a voluntary quality reporting scheme whereby service providers would establish those standards, under the guidance of the OUR, that they are capable of meeting and that they would report on."

The former monopolist said in its response to the OUR that it would draft a Customer Charter to them by March 31, 2008, which it expects to finalise and put into effect by next September.

C&WJ had attempted this approach before. In 2001, at the beginning of the liberalisation of the sector, the firm had issued a Customer Charter in an attempt "at this type of self-regulation".

"We however do acknowledge that we had not gone so far as to have voluntary reporting and this is a further measure to be contemplated," the firm admitted.

Digicel went further by arguing that the regulator did not consider the additional cost associated with such regulations.

"The OUR has failed to undertake a cost benefit analysis, and further to take account of the significant additional costs which would have to be incurred to comply with the proposed standards," said the Irish-owned telecom. "Where there is no need for regulation, but it is nevertheless imposed, operators incur (by definition) unnecessary costs, and these are likely to be passed onto consumers in terms of higher retail rates, reduced investment and reduced innovation."

Digicel also put forward as a reason for the regulator not to move forward with the service quality standards guidelines, the existing clause in the Telecommunications Act that gives the OUR powers to intervene should customers express dissatisfaction with service.

Section 44 (1) (c) of the Act speaks vaguely to service being "rendered in accordance with the standards reasonably expected of a competent provider of those services," but does not give measurable standards to be met by telecom operators.

The OUR's recommendations on quality of service include measures insisting less than five per cent of intra-network calls on mobile networks resulting in dropped calls and 80 per cent of call completion success rate during Time Consistent Busy Hour (TCBH). TCBH is defined as "the one-hour period starting at the same time each day for which the average traffic of resource group is greatest over the days under consideration".

For Internet service providers, the recommended guidelines insist that the "the number of incidents in a 30-day period where the service to 50 or more customers located in the same area is disrupted, not exceed three times".

Flow, as did Digicel, also disagreed with the OUR's position that the proposed standards would make consumers more aware about service quality, given that both telecoms believe that Jamaican consumers are savvy about competitive rates, as well as diversified services options and plans.

"Is the OUR suggesting that currently customers are inadequately informed about the current level of quality of service in the mobile market? Digicel firmly believes that customers' first-hand experiences are far more effective than a published set of monthly data."

"For example, customers are very much aware what network offers the greatest coverage or the lowest level of dropped calls and are guided by this in reaching their decision," added Digicel. Of course, the mobile operator did not leave out the fact that it received the National Quality Award in 2006, which was presented by the Consumer Affairs Commission.

"This award recognised Digicel's 'excellence in customer focus', which along with the OUR's QPR for the June quarter showing a small number of complaints about Digicel, displayed Digicel's 'extremely high levels of customer service', according to the firm.

On fixed lines, the regulator made similar recommendations to those made for mobile and ISP, but C&WJ argued that the OUR went "out of step with the embrace of technology neutrality", by differentiating between mobile and fixed lines.

"[Technology neutrality] means that the same services should be regulated in the same way irrespective of the technology used to deliver the service," added the country's largest fixed-line provider. "C&WJ posits that mobile is a substitute for fixed-line service and that in fact there is not a domestic fixed voice or domestic mobile voice service, but rather that there is one domestic voice market. As such we believe that the extent of the standards established for the mobile network should be the same extent of standards applied to the fixed network."

Interestingly, when Digicel submitted that consumers could switch between mobile and fixed-line networks to make calls as one of the reasons why the OUR should not be able to fix interconnection rates between local telecoms, the Irish-owned telecom lost the case in court.

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