ICSTIS, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of the Telephone Information Services and the industry-funded regulatory body for all premium rate charged telecommunications services, last Monday imposed a fine of £250,000 or just over one million Barbados dollars, on the company Opera Telecom, a major supplier of TV phone-in competitions to some British broadcasters.

ICSTIS found that in Opera Telecom’s competitions, all correct entries submitted after a certain time each day had no chance of winning, despite consumers being charged for entering. As a result, over four years at least 18 million callers had been charged an estimated £20m (or about Bds$80m) for entering the competition without having any chance of winning.

The fine is the highest imposed by the body in its 21-year history.

Opera Telecom was also banned from running phone-in competitions for 12 months and was ordered to make a full refund to viewers who have complained.

GMTV, the broadcaster in the scandal, is itself awaiting its penalty, which will come from the broadcasting regulator Ofcom. GMTV suspended all such competitions in April. Ofcom has already hit Channel 5 with a £300,000 fine for similar irregularities.

Meanwhile, in Barbados, hotelier Adrian Loveridge has written to Minister of Consumer Affairs Lynette Eastmond, who has responsibility for the Fair Trading Commission, asking her to comment on whether Opera Telecom may be operating in Barbados.

Mr. Loveridge says he became convinced that a series of ads which aired on CBC Channel 8 were the work of the same company.

Mr. Loveridge says he contacted the Opera Telecom via email and received a reply from a Ms Joanne Nugent as General Manager of an organisation called Opera Interactive Caribbean, and giving a Barbados telephone number and a UK fax number, which he says turned out to be the fax number of the Birmingham headquarters of Opera Telecom. However, Ms. Nugent told him that Opera Interactive (Barbados) Ltd had no connection to Opera Telecom.

Mr. Loveridge says that he is not convinced, and adds that his research at the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property office turned up a company listed as Opera Interactive (Barbados) Ltd.

Mr. Loveridge says the TV spots shown on local television clearly display Opera Telecom.

He adds that over the last few days yet another competition, this one called Barbados Lucky Numbers, has started to appear both on CBC Channel 8 and in half page print ‘ads’ in the press.
Again, he says, respondents are requested to call or text at a cost of BDS$2.30, yet no company is listed as the operator of the competition.

Mr. Loveridge also says that, as with the previous Opera Telecom competition, no list of winners has been published and as far as he knows, the public has not been informed as to what funds or profits were generated from this promotion.