The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed Multi-System Operators (MSOs) who operate in digitalised regions to ensure delivery of individual subscriber bills and provide the option for online payment.
The MSOs will take the TRAI directions with a pinch of salt as they have not been able to implement billing and packaging despite their best efforts due to dispute with local cable operators (LCOs) on the issues of revenue sharing and billing rights.
“The representative of the MSO or its linked LCO, as the case may be, who collects the payment from the subscriber shall forward the details of the subscriber and the payment made, in front of the subscriber himself, through his mobile phone to the SMS,” TRAI said in its direction to the MSOs.
“The SMS on receipt of this information shall send an automatic acknowledgement of the payment received, to the subscriber either on his registered mobile number or his email address.”
The authority, however, has not indicated the possible action it will take against MSOs should they fail to implement billing.
The directions were issued after the authority discovered that the MSOs were not complying with the provisions of the regulations by the service providers.
The regulator had recently conducted an audit of the head-end and the subscriber management system (SMS) of the MSOs providing cable TV services in the National Capital Territory of Delhi to examine whether the MSOs are complying with regulations and direction.
TRAI had constituted a joint team comprising the representatives of the authority and Broadcast Engineers Consultant India Ltd (BECIL), a public sector unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, to conduct the audit. It had also held meetings with the representatives of LMOs and MSOs on 16 and 17 April.
The authority has directed all the MSOs to ensure the delivery of bill to each subscriber by hand or post or email within 45 days from the date of issue of this direction. The MSOs must also provide online payment option to the subscribers.
The MSOs must also ensure that an electronic acknowledgement is sent to the subscriber, on his registered mobile number or the e-mail address, immediately on his making any payment to the service provider within 30 days from the date of issue of this direction.
The TRAI had earlier directed MSOs to offer cable TV services to its subscribers on both pre-paid and post-paid payment options and generate bills for subscribers.
The authority had also asked MSOs to provide bills to subscribers beginning with the month of November for the metro cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.
The itemised bill would indicate the price of channels or bouquet of channels along with the names of channels in the bouquet, charges for basic tier and channels comprised therein, charges for set-top box (STB), charges for value-added services, details of taxes along with the rate of taxes and service tax registration number and entertainment tax registration number.
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/5017-cq-digital-cable-subscribers-can-pay-bills-online-trai.html
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