Rogers Communications' official rebuke/resolution

in response to the news “Terror group cloned cellphones of Rogers execs”, printed in my previous blog posting

also brought to my attention by the same source shortly afterwards:

First and foremost, the media stories reference two separate issues that should not be confused – Cellular Cloning and Cell Phone Theft.

1) Cellular Cloning:

The reference to Mr. Rogers and other senior executives having their numbers intercepted (cloned) dates back to a situation that occurred in 1998 on a single Rogers' executive phone. Cellular cloning involves the fraudulent use of other individuals' wireless numbers to place calls, thereby resulting in charges on a customer account for calls they did not make.

At that time, cloning was an industry-wide problem which has been removed as a result of the industry move to digital technology. In fact, the vast majority of Rogers' customers today are on GSM digital phones, the world standard upon which more than a billion phones are in operation worldwide, and cloning of these phones is virtually impossible. Analog phones today represent less than 2% of our customer base.

Rogers has an existing policy of contacting consumers if fraud is suspected; our automated systems monitor calling patterns and will flag irregularities for review by our fraud team. However the specific details around fraud detection criteria are proprietary to Rogers and are not shared publicly, in order to protect our customers' interests. We do not want to offer any information publicly that may assist in illegal activity.

While no company or industry is immune to fraud, Rogers has a leading-edge security system that uses the best technology available to monitor customer accounts to help us detect and stop fraud.

2) Cell Phone Theft:

Ms. Susan Drummond's situation had to do with a lost or stolen phone and had nothing to do with cloning. The phone charges have now been eliminated and costs will be reimbursed. Ted Rogers was personally involved in helping to resolve the issue with Ms. Drummond's Wireless account and apologized on behalf of the Company.