Thursday February 24 3:28 PM ET
Mexico Cellular Firms to Compensate for Bad Service
By Fiona Ortiz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's two largest cellphone firms
have agreed to give angry customers free minutes to try to
make up for months of bad service, officials said on Thursday.
The free minutes will go to cellular customers in Mexico
City, where a boom in cellphone subscribers last year taxed
existing networks and led to a plague of dropped calls,
constant busy signals and uncompleted calls.
Telcel, part of telecommunications giant Telmex (NYSE:TMX -
news), and rival Iusacell (NYSE:CEL - news) ``recognized
they were slightly below minimum quality levels established
for cellphone companies ... and agreed to pay users
compensation in April and May,' government regulator Jorge
Nicolin told a news conference.
Nicolin is president of Mexico's Federal Telecommunications
Commission (COFETEL).
Cellphone subscribers in Mexico climbed to 7.625 million
last year, an increase of some 128 percent over 1998, fueled
partly by a new ``calling party pays' system whereby
cellphone owners no longer had to pay for calls they received.
As the number of subscribers soared, the Federal Consumer
Protection Agency received more than 3,300 complaints about
service last year, and in January Cofetel began a call
monitoring program in the capital.
The program found that the service offered by both Telcel
and Iusacell, which is managed and operated by subsidiaries
of U.S. telecommunications company Bell Atlantic Corp
(NYSE:BEL - news), was 'slightly' below standards the
companies had agreed on.
Under those standards, which are set to become tougher this
year, no more than 7 percent of calls should be dropped, no
more than 7 percent of dialed calls should be uncompleted
and the time to connect calls should average 20 seconds or less.
Nicolin declined to disclose the companies' performance
numbers or say which one did better.
Under the compensation plan, users on monthly contract plans
will get 20 percent more minutes added to their usual
contract amount in April and again in May.
Subscribers who buy prepaid minutes for their phones will
automatically receive five free minutes during April and May.
The five-minute allotment represents 20 percent of the
average 25 minutes of calls a month made by prepaid clients. |
