Oftel slams Cable & Wireless on billing U-turn

Oftel has warned Cable & Wireless Communications not to raise charges for its domestic customers after the UK telco tried to hoist a £10 monthly charge on Videotron cable customers making free local calls to businesses.

Residential cable company, Videotron, had offered its customers free local phone calls, prompting many subscribers to use the service to dial their ISPs. CWC consequently demanded a £10 monthly charge for all calls made to business numbers.

A spokesman for CWC said: "It was a small number of customers who spent their life on the Internet who were being subsidised by other subscribers. We sent out letters warning them but some did not get them in time."

Oftel requires telcos to give customers at least a month's notice of any price changes.

A spokesman for the Campaign for Unmetered Telecoms said: "We are pleased to see Oftel getting involved but questions remain. If CWC can afford to offer unlimited local calls for £10 a month to its Videotron customers what about the rest of us? Can other CWC customers take up this offer?"

He added it was a strange time to be making such changes - in the midst of offloading its residential business to NTL.

Susen Sarkar, senior analyst at YankeeGroup Europe, said: "This shows the problem with offering a free service to customers and then trying to get it back. The best example is Mercury One2One which now finds free local calls a significant drain on resources."