Michael Ring
Question:122 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the number of persons which have availed of the free telephone rental allowance for mobile telephones. [3990/04]
View answerWednesday, 11 February 2004
Questions (68)
Written answers
My Department is currently engaged in discussions with mobile phone service providers concerning their possible participation in the free telephone rental allowance scheme. There has not been a significant demand to date from social welfare customers to have the allowance transferred to mobile telephones. This may be due to the fact that most customers who have a mobile phone also have a land line.
I am committed to the development of the telephone allowance scheme to respond to the expanding telecoms market and to facilitate greater client choice of telephone services. My Department has had discussions with the communications regulator, ComReg, to develop the necessary technical and administrative arrangements for mobile phone services.
The arrangements above are necessary to ensure that the allowance will be applied accurately to individual customer accounts through any licensed service provider interested in participating in the scheme. My Department and ComReg have identified suitable mechanisms to enable this for mobile phone services. On this basis, I announced in December last that my Department was willing to discuss arrangements with any interested mobile phone service provider. Since then, my Department has had initial discussions with one licensed company and has preliminary contact from two others.
In the new environment telephone allowance customers would be entitled to select the participating phone service provider of their choice to suit their particular circumstances. Allowance customers would be entitled to switch between provider companies within a reasonable period if they so wished. It would be up to the provider companies concerned to design suitable marketing packages to attract and retain these clients, as with any other group.
If the initial interest now being expressed by mobile phone provider companies develops into active participation, then I would expect that the necessary technical arrangements could be finalised reasonably quickly between my Department, the individual companies concerned and ComReg. To facilitate the participation of mobile phone provider companies in the free telephone rental allowance scheme, certain changes to the Departments computer system would be required.
Equally, mobile phone companies interested in participating in the scheme may have to make changes to their IT systems to allow them to handle the scheme as currently structured. Once agreement has been reached with the mobile phone companies, my Department, in conjunction with the companies and ComReg, will make the necessary arrangements on this basis.
Question No. 123 answered with QuestionNo. 96.