Telecom Billing Problem Calls for Urgent Action

Dear editor,

My encounter about Internet charging forced me to write this. It feels like accounts are not being charged with this latest happening.

Many of my friends tell me the “nice” experience they are facing starting about one month ago. At the beginning, I did not believe it since I think it is impossible to happen. But after repeated encounters, I come to accept that there is something wrong with the telecom billing system.

One of my friends (with account number starting with 0920) has downloaded 6.06GB data from May 14 to Jun 13, 2014, but he was only charged with 196 Br, inclusive of voice fee. As we know, the Internet charging rate in our country is 0.5 Br per MB of data. Hence, the right amount should have been 3,102 Br in the case of this friend of mine.

The account balance of one of my other friends, whose number starts in 0924, was 131 Br two weeks ago. After two weeks of calling and Internet surfing, his account balance stands at 146 Br.

I think the problem results in a huge loss of revenue for our country, Ethiopia. It seems no effective recovery action is being taken to correct the problem.

This raises serious questions:

Is there reliable project management in the current vendor and also in ethio telcom? Is there any synergy during the ongoing project?  Is the new equipment adopted strictly tested before integrating them into the existing network?

Are there enough professional engineers to solve the problem?  Is there any vendor monitoring or continuous follow-up for the service to ensure the service running properly?  Who will be responsible for the problem and the loss of huge money?

Obviously, the answers of these questions seem to not be optimistic. But it is an urgent time to rethink and take prompt actions.

Debre Mesfin

debremesfin@gmail.com


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.