Two telecommunications operators - Wharf New T&T and New World Telephone - claim Pacific Century CyberWorks is delaying their service requests and have called on the industry regulator to impose penalties if the practice does not stop.
On Friday the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta) stepped into the row, asking CyberWorks to improve its performance on interconnections.
'Ofta has received a number of complaints from fixed telecommunications network service (FTNS) operators that PCCW-HKT Telephone had not been providing an efficient service in the interconnection of local loops to other FTNS operators,' the authority said.
CyberWorks has agreed to increase the number of interconnections to a maximum of 16, up from the previous nine, per two-hour window per operator per exchange, which will allow phone lines with the same number to be transferred to other operators from next year.
On October 10, Wharf New T&T requested a transfer of 821 lines from CyberWorks, but only 425 lines were transferred. Two similar requests on the previous and following days were not handled until October 19, when Ofta issued a letter to CyberWorks asking for an explanation.
'This is very disturbing,' said Tony Cheung Tung-lan, executive director of Wharf New T&T. 'We have spent the whole week explaining to clients why our services did not work.' He said some cancelled their orders as a result.
