PAY PHONE VANDALISM AND FRAUD

Cable & Wireless hosted a press conference on March 31^st to discuss vandalism and fraud at its payphones throughout the territory.

Cable and Wireless General Manager Mr. Vance Lewis described the pay telephones as one of the most convenient and popular ways of communicating in the BVI. “This ease of use in communicating is, more often than not, a victim of vandalism and or fraud and is in jeopardy of having the convenience factor reduced,” he stated.

He said pay phones are constantly undergoing maintenance caused by several factors, including vandalism, fraud and environmental conditions. The trouble spots where Cable & Wireless sees the most damage to pay phones are Brandywine Bay; at the community centre at Long Look; near the Cultural Centre in Road Town; Freebottom; Huntum’s Ghut and Pasea.

“Vandalism is perpetrated in many forms: breaking of glass in booths, use of foreign coins or objects, dirty phone cards that have been on the ground and are slid into phones dirt and all and most prevalent, broken handsets that are either ripped out entirely or broken in several places and pieces,” the C&W General Manager explained. “Also, people are accessing the electrical panels in pay phones to either disconnect lights or steal electricity.

When foreign coins for example are inserted in the pay phones, the system is unable to recognize the foreign coins and will automatically shut down and not allow any additional calls to be made until the system is reset.

There are 144 payphones throughout the entire BVI – 103 on Tortola, 20 on Virgin Gorda and 11 on the rest of the islands and according to him, the aim is to have 95% of them working at all times.

Mr. Lewis said damage to pay phones and handsets have an annual maintenance cost of over $100,000 or $69.44 per pay phone. He said on average, handsets are replaced as much as ten times on a monthly basis.

Cable & Wireless now plans to replace all of the pay phones at the ports of entry with a different model of telephones, one that is vandal-proof.

With respect to fraud, the company announced that due to a significant loss in revenue as a result of a pay phone scam involving calls to Jamaica, Cable & Wireless has temporarily closed the route of pay phone calls to Jamaica, effective end of January 2004.

“In January, more than 80% of all pay phone calls terminating in Jamaica were fraudulent and hence, provides Cable & Wireless with no revenue,” The Cable and Wireless General Manager stated.

He said however, customers do have alternatives to completing calls to Jamaica. The options available are Cable & Wireless pre paid calling cards in denominations of $10 and $15; credit card calls and calls made from residential lines or home phones.

Mr. Lewis said Cable & Wireless is investigating ways to solve this scam and is asking for the assistance from the public in uncovering the method (s) and/or the perpetrators, in order to expedite restoration of normal pay phone service to Jamaica.

He stressed that this scam may not be perpetrated by Jamaican, but said the fraud manifests itself in sequential one minute calls to the same number in Jamaica. He was unable also to say how much money Cable & Wireless had lost in dollars and cents.

“Cable & Wireless is still investigating and analyzing revenue impact… (and) Cable and Wireless is working with other (C&W) business units in the Caribbean to determine how wide-spread the fraud is,” he reported. The company also recognized that many of the pay phones across the territory suffer from environmental conditions, with the units exposed to the sun as they are. Mr. Lewis said this also contributes to the higher rate of maintenance.