There have been many complaints from customers who come out to accuse telecom companies for over-billing their voice calls or depleting their data bundles at a fast rate. In a consultative letter to all telecom companies, the Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) to propose uniform metering principles that should help the industry maximize interoperability and compatibility for cross-network services like voice termination as well as the general integrity of the market.
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The proposed voice and data service metering and billing principles are aimed at enhancing the integrity of metering and billing schemes of licensed service providers and interconnected 3rd party vendors like Ericsson, ZTE, and Huawei.
Specifically, the principles aim to among others:
- Establish a clear and consistent regulatory tariff filling framework
- Establish consistent standards for the measurement of units of use for metered services
- Establish allowable error factors and thresholds in the measuring and billing of voice and data services
- Treatment of rounding effects in metering and billing
- Good faith in metering and billing for telecom services
- Transparency and disclosure obligations for metering and billing
- Consumer protection and redress mechanisms for metering and billing-related complaints
- Establishment of a compliance monitoring framework for metering and billing integrity
- Establishing a regulatory penalty regime for non-compliance
Accurate advertising by telecoms
In this regard, every telecom company is obliged by UCC to exercise utmost good faith in availing key product and promotional information to target customers. At the very least, a service provider will be obliged to keep an UpToDate key facts sheet (terms and conditions) available on its website. Where possible, access to key fact documents may be zero-rated or accessible at no charge to prospective customers.
Product performance updates
Following the launch of a product, every telecom company shall file with UCC on a monthly basis key product performance updates or indicators including:
i. Incidents of metering and billing-related complaints
ii. Product uptime
iii. Product failure incidents and redress efforts
Units of measurement and allowable errors in metering and billing
UCC intends to have 100% metering and billing accuracy, billing errors and the related erroneous revenues shall not exceed more than 0.0001% of the specific product revenues.
UCC has warned the telecoms that all metering and billing errors that have a net revenue effect that exceeds the 0.0001% threshold shall attract fines and penalties in line with the Fees and Fines Regulations,2019.
Over and above the revenue-related accuracy targets, UCC has proposed the following metrics to guide as an allowable error in the measurement of units of use.
| Variable | Allowable error |
|---|---|
| Call duration | +-100 milliseconds |
| Data volume | +-102 bytes |
| SMS | +-10 characters or 14 bytes |
UCC expects all telecom companies to implement and maintain accurate charging rules for all products or services. Each carrier shall ensure 100% charging or billing accuracy for all services offered to consumers, in line with the rules declared to the Commission.
Compliance monitoring framework
The Commission shall establish a monitoring and audit framework to ascertain the degree of compliance to the various metering and billing principles/rules by licensed operators.
In fulfillment of this new obligation, UCC may collect relevant product datasets on a monthly, quarterly, or any other frequency that it might deem appropriate. Performance data may also be collected on an ad hoc need-to-have basis.
All telecom companies are expect to submit written responses to this consultation which should be filed with the Commission no later than 27th April 2021
