By Lynford Simpson, Staff Reporter 
Senior vice-president cellular services, Cable and Wireless Jamaica, Steve Twomey. - File
MOUNTING CONSUMER complaints about poor mobile service is believed to have pushed Cable and Wireless Jamaica (C&W) cellular service boss Steve Twomey into an unexpected administrative leave.
The senior vice-president for mobile services left the position yesterday and a terse company statement promised a fuller explanation later, but also emphasised that no further comment would be made at this time.
Inside sources told The Gleaner he had been asked to step down from the key post. "Twomey is no longer a part of Cable and Wireless. You can draw your own conclusions," he declared.
Twomey, who was head of mobile services for nearly three years, has been under pressure over the past few weeks with the telecom giant's performance falling below consumer expectations.
This was made worse with the collapse of the company's cellular network on the weekend following a disruption in service last week.
That embarrassment came less than 24 hours after it announced a raft of incentives for its pre-paid customers last Thursday, including free calls and much reduced rates.
From Friday morning, and continuing for most of the day and all-day Saturday, pre-paid customers had difficulty making calls as the circuit was constantly busy. There was speculation that the network was jammed by mobile users who rushed the system in a bid to take advantage of the incentives including $100 free calling time and $7 per minute (down from $13) for calls made on weekends.
At the time of the disruption last Tuesday and Wednesday, Twomey said the worst had passed. He blamed that failure on a congested network, the result of people trying to make free calls, and upgrading work to add more capacity to the overburdened system. He pointed out that further disruptions were anticipated, but stressed that they would not be on the same scale. But last Saturday many people complained that they were unable to make a single call for the entire day.
The usually candid Twomey declined to comment when asked yesterday whether the concessions granted Thursday had compounded his problem. "You will see why (I have no comment) in a few days," he explained. "No comment," was also his answer when asked whether he had resigned or was asked to leave.
Mr. Twomey, who arrived from the United States about three years ago, had his contract renewed last year when he was persuaded to stay. This followed the resignation of vice-president for mobile designate, Keith Smith, who was said to be Twomey's understudy.
Mr. Twomey has on several occasions publicly accepted responsibility for the poor quality service the company's cellular customers have had to put up with. But his explanation that the numbers, around 355,000, had exceeded projections no longer held sway as critics accused the company of greed.
C&W was also accused of rushing to sign on as many new customers as possible using various incentives packages in anticipation of strong competition from new market players, Digicel. At the same time, the accompanying upgrade to its network lagged behind schedule.
Digicel has capitalised on C&W's misfortunes, wooing customers with the promise of a better quality of service.
At last Thursday's press briefing to announce its concessions to pre-paid customers, Gary Barrow, C&W's acting president, took more than five minutes to say whether the company's management still had confidence in Twomey.
After placing the blame on several things including technology and the entire management team, which would have been responsible for the decisions taken, Barrow eventually said "Yes" to the question of the company's confidence in Twomey.
