Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Dig­i­cel Trinidad has filed a court in­junc­tion against a mo­bile com­peti­tor which Guardian Me­dia Ltd un­der­stands is bmo­bile.

The in­junc­tion was filed to cease bmo­bile’s re­jec­tion of thou­sands of Dig­i­cel sub­scribers wish­ing to port (switch) their num­bers to the Dig­i­cel net­work.

In a re­lease, Dig­i­cel said it “has been con­cerned at the high lev­el of un­suc­cess­ful ports over the past two months.”

Dig­i­cel al­so as­sured it con­tin­ues to ob­serve the agreed in­dus­try process for port­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Dig­i­cel, these pro­ceed­ings have been filed to en­sure cus­tomers’ free­dom to choose their pre­ferred mo­bile op­er­a­tor is re­spect­ed.

“This is about do­ing what is right for cus­tomers. Over the past year, we have made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments to en­sure we can of­fer the best and most re­li­able cus­tomer-fo­cused net­work in T&T.

“Now we are stand­ing up for cus­tomers who wish to ex­er­cise their free­dom of choice,” Jab­bor Kayu­mov, Dig­i­cel TT CEO said.

He said the com­pa­ny re­mains ex­cit­ed that thou­sands of its sub­scribers want to switch to Dig­i­cel, adding that it looks for­ward to wel­com­ing them to the Dig­i­cel fam­i­ly, where they are “guar­an­teed a bet­ter ex­pe­ri­ence, with much more val­ue.”

In a re­cent in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Kayu­mov ex­pressed con­cern about bmo­bile’s “an­ti-com­pet­i­tive be­hav­iour.

“If my cus­tomer wants to port, my job, and I keep telling my team, is to en­sure his ex­it ex­pe­ri­ence––it’s not on­ly on­board­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, it’s ex­it ex­pe­ri­ence––if you want to leave, I want you to have to best ex­pe­ri­ence, so it’s go­ing to hap­pen as smooth as pos­si­ble,” Kayu­move said.

He claimed that out of 100 per cent of re­quests sent by bmo­bile cus­tomers to port their num­bers to Dig­i­cel, 90 per cent was re­ject­ed with­out any le­git­i­mate rea­son. Ac­cord­ing to Kayu­mov these sta­tis­tics are known due to the in­ter­ac­tion of the two mo­bile com­pa­nies on the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T’s (TATT) port­ing plat­form. The port­ing plat­form is a third par­ty tool where the port­ing re­quests are gen­er­at­ed.

Kayu­mov ex­plained when a bmo­bile cus­tomer wants to port a num­ber to his or her net­work, an ap­pli­ca­tion has to be filled out to en­ter in­to a con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ship with Dig­i­cel––that re­quest is then sent from Dig­i­cel to bmo­bile on the port­ing plat­form re­quest­ing the cus­tomer’s num­ber be re­leased and trans­ferred.

Kayu­mov added there are some le­git­i­mate rea­sons why some num­bers can­not be port­ed. For in­stance, if a cus­tomer is bound to the terms of a post-paid con­tract or owes mon­ey to the op­er­a­tor, then the num­ber would not be re­leased to port to the oth­er net­work, he ex­plained. A healthy re­jec­tion lev­el, Kayu­mov said be­tween five to 20 per cent, not­ing that Dig­i­cel’s re­jec­tion ra­tio is around 15 to 17 per cent.

“If my cus­tomer wants to leave, if he owes me noth­ing, I’m let­ting him go––as smooth as pos­si­ble, as quick as pos­si­ble, so he has a good cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence,”Kayu­mov added.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, bmo­bile said the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts, hence TSTT would re­frain from com­ment­ing. In re­cent re­sponse to Dig­i­cel’s threat of le­gal ac­tion, bmo­bile had said it is able to fa­cil­i­tate port­ing trans­ac­tions in ei­ther di­rec­tion and in full com­pli­ance with all tech­ni­cal pro­to­cols as man­dat­ed by TATT.

It al­so wished Dig­i­cel “the very best in its ef­forts” to re­solve any tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties it (Dig­i­cel) may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on its (Dig­i­cel’s) end. Bmo­bile had al­so re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to work­ing with Dig­i­cel to val­i­date all net­work-to-net­work pro­to­cols.