newsbytes@clarinet.com (01/18/90)
LONDON, ENGLAND, 1990 JAN 17 (NB) -- Following the lead taken by several North American PTTs, Mercury Communications has announced it the closure of a "dial-a-porn" service carried on its premium rate service. The 0839 services carried by Mercury have a tariff charges of 25 pence (38 cents) off-peak, 38 pence (50 cents) peak rate per minute. Announcing the withdrawal of the dial-a-porn service, Mercury's managing director, said: "The existence of these lines carrying material of a pornographic nature was brought to our attention by one of our customers. Upon investigation, we found that a contracted service provider had sub-contracted the lines and this is why we were unaware of the content." "We offered the customer the opportunity of terminating the service as an alternative to Mercury discontinuing it, and he agreed to co-operate. As a result the service ceased by midnight on Friday, Jan. 12," he added. Howell-Davies went on to say that Mercury considered carrying pornographic services on its network to be an unacceptable use of the Mercury system. "We have established a high reputation for the integrity of our service... Although pornographic premium rate services could bring considerable revenue to the company, we prefer to conform to the clearly expressed requirements of our customers," he said. Mercury's premium rate service (PRS) was launched on 11 September, 1989, some time after similar services were launched by British Telecom and Racal Vodafone. After receiving a customer complaint about a particular set of numbers, Mercury referred the complaint to ICSTIS (Independent Committee for Supervising Telephone Information Services) for a ruling on whether the committee's code of conduct had been broken. Interestingly, ICSTIS ruled that both the message content and the advertisements promoting the service were within the code of practice requirements. Mercury Communications, however, took the decision to ask the service provider to withdraw service to the sub- contractor or face a possible forcible disconnection. To do this, Mercury invoked a clause in its contract which states: "...the service provider shall ensure that the services are of a quality and content and are advertised, promoted and presented in a manner so as not to bring Mercury's name into disrepute and contain nothing which is likely in light of generally prevailing standards of decency and propriety to cause offence to its customers." (Steve Gold/19900117/Press Contact: Susan Harley, Mercury Communications - Tel: 01-528-2106)