BT complaint against Unicom regarding conduct relating to the transfer of customers between communications providers
| Issuer | Office of Communications |
Complainant: British Telecommunications plc (“BT”)
Complaint against: Universal Utilities Limited, trading as Unicom (“Unicom”)
Case opened: 1 September 2006
Case closed: 29 December 2006
Issue: Whether Unicom, in carrying out certain activities after receipt of a notification of the transfer of one or more line(s) of its customers to another communications provider, is/was in breach of either General Condition 1.2 of the General Conditions of Entitlement and/or section 128 of the Communications Act 2003.
Relevant instrument: General Condition 1.2 of the General Conditions of Entitlement governing the use of certain information provided in the context of Network Access arrangements and/or section 128 of the Communications Act 2003 regarding persistent misuse.
Update note: 5 April 2007
As set out below, Ofcom issued a notification to Unicom under section 94 of the Communications Act 2003 on 29 December 2006 and closed this investigation. This ‘update note’ provides a summary of developments since the investigation was closed.
Ofcom’s investigation considered two main issues:
First, BT’s original complaint raised concerns that Unicom was acting inappropriately in canceling orders from customers who wished to transfer provision of their telephone service away from Unicom to BT. In particular, BT suggested that after receiving notification from BT that lines were to be transferred, Unicom was using the ‘Cancel Other’ functionality to stop the transfer without obtaining the customer’s permission.
As set out previously, Ofcom's investigation concluded that BT's allegations regarding misuse of the ‘Cancel Other’ functionality were not supported by the evidence gathered during the investigation.
The second issue considered during this investigation was whether Unicom’s activities following receipt of transfer notifications from BT amounted to a breach of General Condition 1.2.
Ofcom has previously stated that ‘losing’ communications providers would be in breach of General Condition 1.2 if they used information obtained from BT during the transfer process to engage in marketing activity to try to retain the customer. The information received by the losing provider during the process to transfer lines is supplied for the purposes of enabling the transfer to take place and for ensuring that certain consumer protection measures are carried out. In this respect, losing providers must send ‘notification of transfer’ letters to customers which...
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