By Dennie Quill, ContributorI WISH someone would grant me this one favour. I want to be a fly on the wall in the Office of Utility Regulations (OUR). You see, I have always wondered about the agency's mandate. Last week this wonderment went up several notches after a friend related the experience he had with his telecoms provider and the asinine response he received from the OUR regulator.
My friend who runs a small business in Kingston signed up for ADSL service with Cable and Wireless (C&W) for his operations, demanding that he be in constant touch with his overseas associates. He knows there are real benefits to be gained by employing the new information and communication technologies.
He was warned by another associate who had experienced horrors with the service, but being a loyal Cable & Wireless customer he ignored the sage advice and signed up anyway. But the frustrations and rudeness that he encountered while dealing with C&W technicians is a story for another time.
Anyway, he paid his significant fee, got hooked up and he was good to go. For a couple of days he was in hog's heaven as things were moving along smoothly. But before the week was out he lost his service. And every week thereafter there were unexplained outages. After nearly a day without service and galled by the inane C&W responses, he called the OUR, thinking there must be sanctions for a company that provides such sloppy service.
What bothered him was the seeming lack of concern by C&W personnel who were offering a service which they appear quite incapable of delivering. No one was able to explain the root cause of the problem. In the meantime his business was suffering and he was fast losing credibility in the marketplace.
REMEDIAL ACTION
When he rang the OUR he asked to speak with a regulatory officer in the telecoms section. I was listening to the call on his speaker phone so I know the conversation took place. My friend aired his concerns and asked the officer what remedial action could be taken. The OUR officer explained that because there is competition in the sector, an aggrieved customer had the easy option of switching carriers. As far as he could see the problem was easily solved by simply moving the business.
But Mr. Regulator that cannot be the answer, my friend argued as the veins in his neck thickened. Every time one enters into a new relationship with a service provider he has to pay an entry fee. This is a cost which a businessman expects to recover over time. If he keeps switching carrier every time he has shabby service then he would always be on the losing end. The entry fee is an effective disincentive to make that change. Mr. Regulator had another nonsense argument. He pointed out that C&W offered more than 500 services so it was impossible to monitor them all. My word, C&W offers voice telephone, Internet, Mobile, Fax, Data and Video conferencing and I am thinking that all the 500 services fall within one of those categories. The officer suggested that he really had to depend on customers to complain in writing about problems.
CONSUMING PUBLIC
My mind tells me this is not the best approach, for what prevents a competitor from using this route to damage the other's reputation? What is the value of an OUR if it cannot monitor these services on behalf of the consumer? What is the value of an OUR if it does not insist that every time a telecoms company installs a new service it be given details of the equipment and its capability? What is the value of an OUR if it doesn't insist on getting regular reports from the telecoms provider about the service? The rumblings I have heard seem to suggest that the ADSL service at C&W has long outstripped the capacity. In any event the consuming public needs to be told what has led to the deterioration in service.
Mr. OUR regulator didn't quite follow my friend's reasoning that customers who are deprived of the service should be given a rebate since they pay a fixed monthly charge, worse he could not countenance the suggestion that our local regulatory agency should impose a penalty on the telecoms sector when its members perform badly. How else can the OUR focus the minds of providers on the quality of their service?
It seems to me that the OUR is a rate regulator and really has no regulatory stick to protect consumers. At a time when business people are becoming more dependent on the information infrastructures that underpin the 21st century, it is a shame what C&W is passing off as service. And the OUR must see itself as aiding and abetting this negligence.
Dennie Quill is a veteran journalist who can be reached at denniequill@hotmail.com
