Daily Times

KARACHI: Taking notice of alleged excessive billing by cellular mobile operators (CMOs), the government Thursday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to develop and implement a strategy to protect consumer rights.

The communications regulator said that it had been observed that CMOs were not informing their users (prepaid, postpaid) about remaining credit balance in rupees, minutes (talk time), SMS and data (MBs, GBs) either in the form of text message, dialogue box or end of day usage SMS as per international best practices and saving cellular mobile users from experiencing any “bill shock”.

The PTA said that it was receiving a large number of complaints against overbilling and abrupt deduction of balance from mobile phone users.

“CMOs have, however, claimed that mobile phone subscribers automatically go on default/base tariff after the exhaustions of their packages/offers, which results in higher bills,” added the PTA.

“It is to be noted that a majority of subscribers are not aware of the default/basic rates levied by CMOs for data services. For instance, in case of international roaming, a subscriber has been charged Rs 1 million on account of data usage for a short time. Generally, CMOs compensate aggrieved subscribers in case of excessive use of data because of the inability of subscribers to pay high bills. However, this practice is difficult to continue and not sustainable for CMOs in the longer period,” said the PTA.

The PTA was of the view that a standardised information/alert/notification system should be followed by all CMOs so that issue of unexpected bills could be curtailed.

“Currently, some of the CMOs are sending text/dialogue box/SMS to subscribers when they reach limit of their packages and subsequently subscribers are charged under the default rate, which ranges between Re l/MB to Rs l2/MB (excluding tax).”

“However, PTA does not consider it a proper solution to the problem being faced by subscribers. A better and more logical solution is that the service shall stop automatically when the credit is used up.”

“The PTA firmly believes that international roaming of data service should be stopped by CMOs, and they shall inform all subscribers that they are encouraged to use a local connection of their destination while travelling, which is much cheaper than the international roaming rates,” the communications regulator noted.

“In this connection, the PTA has started consultations with CMOs to protect consumer rights. The purpose of consulting CMOs is to save cellular mobile users from “bill shock” that they experience when a subscribed package is exhausted and the current system allows them to continue to use the data service both locally (which should not be the case) and voice and data services while on international roaming,” the PTA concluded.

Published in Daily Times, September 15^th 2017.