TRAI issues code for metering and billing accuracy

New Delhi, Mar 22 (UNI) The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has developed a code of practice for metering and billing accuracy in India in order to bring standardisation and transparency in the procedures being followed by various operators for greater accuracy.

TRAI had been receiving complaints on billing related matters.

These complaints cover areas such as inability to verify the bills, not having clarity about the tariff scheme on which they are being billed, delay in refund and non-adjustment of credits in the bills among other.

In order to understand the reasons for such complaints and also to define the parameters with benchmarks for fair and reliable metering and billing system, TRAI undertook a sample audit of the billing system of the mobile operators.

The auditing of the billing systems of mobile operators revealed that while the billing systems being used by various operators are comparable to other systems being deployed by major international players, some of the process/procedures being followed by the mobile operators leads to customer complaints and attendant customer dissatisfaction.

The Authority had, therefore, in order to bring standardisation and transparency in the procedures being followed by various operators, developed a code of practice for metering and billing accuracy in India, which has benchmarks for metering and billing system.

In May 2005, the authority had released a consultation paper on billing issues, which also contained the above code of practice.

Following public consultation on this code of practice and other billing issues and taking into account the comments received from stakeholders, the Authority had finalised a draft regulation on code of practice for metering and billing Accuracy. This draft regulation was circulated to all stakeholders seeking their comments, if any, by March 19, 2006.

The Authority has so far not received any comments on the draft regulation from any of the stakeholders in the matter. The Authority, accordingly, issued today a Regulation on Code of Practice for Metering and Billing Accuracy.

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