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Opera Telecom and BT RIDE also fingered #
Posted Thursday 7th February 2008 17:10 GMT
@Chris
This is taken from the Icstis Oral Hearing concerning the GMTV phone-in 'scandal'.
Did BT know they were taking their customers for a 'RIDE'.
19. A further issue investigated by ICSTIS was the use of overflow platforms. The servers operated by Opera could deal with some 1,200 simultaneous callers, but at busy times as may as 10,000 viewers would call at once. The excess would be transferred to other handlers. In the later stages of the Competition, the entire overflow was handled on the RIDE platform operated by BT. No finalists were ever selected from the BT platform, yet the callers would be charged as usual. Entrants whose calls were transferred to the RIDE platform were therefore always disenfranchised.
20. A further allegation raised by a Mail on Sunday article of 29 April 2007 and investigated by ICSTIS was that for a period during February 2007 there were technical difficulties with the telephone lines, and accordingly all finalists were selected from SMS entries. It was accepted by Opera that from 8 February to 20 February 2007 all callers to the 090 number were transferred over to the BT RIDE overflow platform, which meant that the callers would still be charged but that they had no chance of winning. For the eight competition days in question only those entering by other means were selected as finalists. Viewers were not informed at any time during this period that those entering by telephone could not win.
Dated this 24th day of September 2007
