Better protection for customers of tech and telecoms firms is on the cards, the sector regulator has pledged.
The Utility Regulation and Competition Office, known as OfReg, has published a draft determination on proposals designed to move Cayman from “voluntary ‘best effort’ guidelines to a modern, enforceable regulatory regime” designed to tackle consumer concerns.
Sonji Myles, the interim CEO of OfReg, said, “By establishing clear service standards, statutory timelines for complaint resolution and defining the exact parameters of billing and contracts, we will prove licensees with a stable operational baseline while ensuring that consumers, including our small business community, are treated fairly.
“We encourage all stakeholders to examine the technical details of this draft and provide their feedback.”
OfReg said the proposals for new rules were built on “eight fundamental pillars”.
These include making sure that tech companies stick to “objective technical benchmarks” on connection speeds and uptime, with automatic penalties for failure to live up to expectations.
Service providers will have to hit a minimum percentage of advertised speeds and maintain a network availability of 99.5%.
Accurate and clear details
Consumers will also get accurate and clear details of rates and terms before they sign contracts and a strict framework for making and resolving complaints.
There will also be special protections governing instalment plans for handsets to prevent unfair device locking and fair rules for contracts.
The regulator said new standards on billing accuracy and transparency would also be introduced, as well as fair debt collection practices.
Restitution orders will also become mandatory, where the regulator can order suppliers to give refunds or compensation for long outages, overcharging or billing errors.
Myles said, “The draft determination benchmarks the Cayman Islands against global best practices to address the realities of today’s digital economy.
“We are presenting a mature, rights-based framework that tackles current consumer concerns head on.”
Performance complaints
The regulator’s get-tough policy in the Information and Communications Technology sector comes after complaints over the years that it had failed to do enough to protect consumers.
The first chairman of OfReg’s then-new Consumer Council two years ago, George Ebanks, quit the role after just three months and claimed the new body had no real powers to deal with utility companies that offered “subpar” services.
Ebanks said the council just filled out complaints forms for customers and sent them to OfReg for “a most bureaucratic process of oversight and undue delay”.
He added in his resignation letter that “no one currently has any confidence in OfReg as a unit of government and what it was created to attempt to achieve”.
But OfReg hit back that Ebanks had been “aggressive” in his communications with the regulator and at council meetings, which had upset its members.
‘Little impact’
A 2020 Auditor General’s report on OfReg’s performance in its first three years of operation found that most of the regulator’s decisions had made little impact on consumer protection.
It added that consumer protection regulations, which were supposed to have been completed the year before, had still not come into force.
Proposed consumer protection for the retail sector had also been circulated for the previous five years and had gone through public consultation.
But the proposed new rules had not been implemented after they were greeted with criticism by the business community.
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