Mobile phone customers who sign up with Cellular One are not able to receive incoming calls yet, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

A glitch in Cellular One's interconnection with BTC has rendered cellular phones using the new service useless for getting calls.

But the company -- which introduced competition to the Island's only cellular phone service provider, BTC Mobility -- is calming customers until the crinkle is ironed out by making all outgoing calls free.

And last night Cellular One chairman and CEO Kurt Eve insisted his company was not running into similar competition obstacles that tied up BTC's first local competitor Quantum with technical and legal conflicts for months.

He said BTC was doing everything it could to help resolve the problem.

But he admitted when the Cellular One shop on Reid Street first opened its doors to customers a week ago he expected the interconnection snags to be solved by early this week.

"Our engineers are working hour by hour every day with BTC's engineers to get this fixed,'' he said.

"And BTC is really working with us on this. It is not something they are doing to us, they are trying to fix it just as we are.'' He said it was impossible to know when the system would be fully operational -- and customers could expect to receive calls.

"I would say early next week but then last week I would have said early this week, and early this week I would have said by Friday, so I just can't say.

"Both BTC and Cellular One are trying to fix this.'' But asked what the exact problem was, if it wasn't the old interconnection snags which tied up Quantum and eventually saw it put up for sale, he said: "That I don't know, you would have to ask BTC about that.'' And he said if BTC execs were aware the interconnection issues would arise "they didn't tell us about it, that's for sure.'' Mr. Eve said he was pleased with the huge customer response to Cellular One's launch after only a week of operation.

And while he admitted most customers were "anxious to be able to get calls'', he said they were also happy to get free outgoing calls in the man time.