John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
LEFT: Davis: We don't mind a good fight. -WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER. RIGHT: Hall: This is an invasion of privacy. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A LEGAL battle is looming between telecommunications providers Cable and Wireless (C&WJ) and Digicel over allegations that one network is retrieving and using customers' numbers for telemarketing and sales campaigns.
A release from C&WJ yesterday said it has taken legal steps in response to an advertisement by Digicel on Sunday that another mobile company was making unsolicited calls to its customers, selling GSM products and services.
In an advertisement, Digicel's chief executive officer, David Hall, said the problem had been brought to the company's attention and assured its customers that it did not share numbers with any other entity for any purpose.
AN INSULT TO THE PEOPLE
"This 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," Mr. Hall said in the advertisement. He added: "They are now taking advantage of their access to this information for their own marketing purposes."
However, Rodney Davis, C&WJ's president and chief executive officer ,yesterday lashed out at Digicel. "This latest accusation 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," declared Mr. Davis. "I am very disappointed that Digicel has chosen this course of action. It is misleading and quite frankly, insulting to the Jamaican people."
Mr. Davis admitted that his company had embarked on a telesales campaign to attract new customers to its network, but said the telephone numbers were selected using a predictive dialling system, a common method used in telemarketing. Furthermore, he explained that "the methods used to determine the numbers being called are based on publicly available number codes. He maintained that "there has been absolutely no breach of Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) regulations or interconnection agreements between the companies."
But Digicel's head of marketing, Heather Shields, explained that her company was responding to complaints received from its customers. "We responded and placed the ad on Sunday to let them (customers) know that we are not giving their numbers to any other company for telesales purposes," she said.
Digicel's commercial director, Harry Smith, said up to yesterday, his company had not been notified by C&WJ of its intention to take legal recourse.
