Bogotá — Mobile telecommunications carriers Claro and Movistar are once facing the scrutiny of the sector regulator in Colombia for allegedly blocking their users from changing operators “without the corresponding evidence”, informed Thursday the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC), the country’s industry watchdog.
The SIC announced that it has opened investigation to file charges against mobile service providers Claro and Movistar.
Last week Movistar was sanctioned with a fine of 626.4 million pesos ($152,600) for impeding the number portability of its users’ mobile lines.
The SIC found that the telephone company rejected requests for portability to other operators, arguing that the applicants were not the owners of the lines or that they were in arrears, without evidence to prove the veracity of such reasoning.
In this new case, the SIC will investigate whether the companies did not submit to the Database Administrator the documents required to support the rejection due to default and ownership of users who wish to change operator, but keeping the same number of their mobile line.
The SIC said the investigation was initiated after several complaints and inspection visits carried out between January and April.
In these inspections it was preliminarily determined that the operators allegedly “continue to generate rejections based on these situations without having the evidence required by the regulatory body, a situation that has already caused them to be hit with administrative sanctions through fines and administrative orders”.
If the facts are confirmed, fines of up to 15,000 minimum salaries may be imposed, once “the procedure established as a guarantee of the rights of defense and contradiction of these mobile communication service operators is exhausted”, the SIC said.
Last year, the SIC sanctioned Claro, Movistar, Tigo, ETB, Virgin Mobile, Móvil Éxito, WOM and Avantel for violation of the mobile number portability regime with fines amounting to 6.49 billion pesos ($1.58 million=.
At that time, it was determined that those operators failed to comply with the steps to make the process effective for users to switch carrier, that they rejected applications without complying with the requirements, did not comply with the maximum deadlines and the steps provided, and ignored their duty to provide the information required by the authority in an accurate and complete manner, informed the SIC.
