THE island’s two telephone companies are engaged in a war of words over pricing. Cable & Wireless Guernsey announced yesterday that it would cost the same to call one of its mobile phones from a landline as it does to phone one from its rival, Wave Telecom.

It has blamed Wave, but the rival company said that the C&W statement was factually inaccurate.

C&W said that the increase was necessary to allow it to comply with its licence obligations and followed the confirmation of termination rates by its rival.

C&W said that in an effort to ensure that Wave could comply with the direction from the Office of Utility Regulation to launch its mobile service on 1 July, the 21-day notice period for any price changes had been waived by the regulator.

Wave marketing director Jim Coupe said that C&W had helped Wave meet its deadline in a very tight timescale.

‘Wave was very late in providing us with its cost information which we need to set call charges so there was no way we could meet our licence obligations and Wave’s deadline,’ he said.

‘When the information finally arrived, Wave’s costs to us were higher than the retail rates that we had been charging our customers.

‘We had to announce new charges otherwise each call to a Wave mobile would result in C&W losing money. No business in Guernsey would contemplate sustaining that position.’

Mr Coupe added that C&W would be in breach of its own licence obligations if it had different call rates for its own and Wave’s customers.

‘Therefore the company was obliged to alter the call charges to C&W mobiles to avoid discrimination.

‘We can empathise with our customers who may be disappointed by the need for price increases and by the lack of notice of these changes. ‘The rapid time frame into which we have been forced is the result of Wave’s late confirmation of the rates to terminate calls.’

Wave said that it had provided C&W with all the necessary cost information in plenty of time and said it had nothing to gain from holding up this process.

Wave challenged C&W’s assertion that it was charging more than C&W was charging its customers.

Wave said that it was prevented from divulging details of the agreement between the two companies, but the costs were not dissimilar.

Wave quoted as an example that it was charging its customers 15p a minute on most post-paid tariffs for weekday daytime calls.

This compared to C&W which intended to charge its post-paid customers 25p a minute to call Wave mobiles between 8am and 8pm from Monday to Saturday.

As Wave’s costs were not dissimilar to C&W’s, it said it was at a loss to explain the huge difference in prices.