Metering & Billing project - OTR003:2000 Drafting Group: Summary of meeting held at Oftel on Friday 15th September 2000

Atteendees

Agenda Items:

1  2  3 4  5  6  7  8   9

Attendees :

Name Company or Organisation

Bill Hawkins        Oftel
Hilary Anderson Oftel
Caroline Wallace Oftel
Paul Ebling        BABT
Dale Whitaker        BABT
Alison Hooker        Vodafone
Julia Stutfield        Vodafone
William Read        Value Telecom
Geraldine Prince Telewest
Sara-Jane Amey Telewest
Matthew Arnold NTL
Vernon Kitay        One2One
Louise Hampton Orange
Paul Masters        Orange
Danny Dutt        BT Cellnet
Richard Bowyer BT
Geoff Marsh        Kingston Communications
Ben Wrigley        Kingston Telecommunications Laboratories
David Smith        Abis
Barry Cartman        Cartman dotOrg
David Lang        C&W
Mike Inman        BSI

The meeting began at 10.30, with a welcome and introduction from Bill Hawkins, Oftel. The agenda, as circulated before the meeting, was tabled, together with the notes of the previous meeting held at Oftel on 26 June 2000.

The agenda was accepted by the meeting after discussing the following:

1. The basis for extending the scheme
2. The burden of metering and billing approval on smaller operators
3. Concern that the success of a new scheme would be difficult to measure
4. Benefit to consumers
5. Would the output be measurable
6. Reason for change and time scales for implementation
7. Formal Terms of Reference and their scope.

RB (BT) requested another item under AOB related to how issues arising from the use of multiple approvals body would be dealt with.

The notes were thoroughly examined in detail. Objectives of OTR revision project as outlined in these notes were discussed in detail.

A wide ranging discussion followed on the inclusion of non-telecoms items (which will appear in phone bills increasingly in the future) in the Metering and Billing standard. The issues discussed were:

1. The "all chargeable elements" statement.
2. Non-telecoms items and other means of consumer protection.
3. The ways a bill could be split to separate non-telecom items from the standard.
4. The benefits that an operator would receive from accurate billing.
5. Should an operator have to argue for the exclusion of services from the scheme each time or should the standard make specific reference to these services.
6. The integrity and processing of data received from other sources e.g. a billing file from an overseas operator.

BH (Oftel) suggested that explanatory notes in the Annex to the revised standard should expand on what is in and what is out of the standard. This was agreed by the meeting.

RB (BT) requested that the ‘technology neutral’ objective be kept to the front of the group’s mind during all discussions. RB also asked what the industry average level of justifiable complaints is? It will cost operators a lot of money to meet the standard, and if the impact won’t be great on complaints, then effort to meet the standard may not be justified.

Workshop notes of 26^th June accepted and adopted.

It was felt that this agenda item had been dealt with during the previous discussions, and therefore was passed over.

Draft 3b of OTR003: 2000 as circulated by BABT prior to the meeting was tabled.

BH (Oftel) stated that comments on draft 2d have been received by Oftel, and were incorporated as far as possible in new draft 3b, circulated three days prior to meeting. Another draft will not be issued before all comments on draft 3b have been addressed.

RB (BT) asked why application to other countries was relevant to UK standard? BH (Oftel) stated that the intention was to allow approval bodies to use this standard in other countries. It is not the intention to require that UK operators with overseas operations apply the same standard to those overseas operations.

Discussion took place on the use of the word "charging" in the first sentence, and the definition of telecommunications services. Telecommunications services are defined in Statutory Instrument 1998 / No.3170.

Para 1.3: Discussion about whether wholesale considerations should be included or not took place. BABT felt that there was nothing new in incorporating wholesale requirements. RB (BT) considered that wholesale charging accuracy could be dealt with on a commercial basis. PE (BABT) clarified that interconnection only charging is beyond the scope of the standard. PE (BABT) suggested a definition of wholesale that excluded anything covered by an Interconnect agreement. Group expressed concern that para 1.3 was too general.

Para 1.4: Discussion on whether definition of materiality should be based on number of customers or service value. The possibility of using a combination of a value measure and a quantity measure in the definition of materiality was considered. PE (BABT) suggested that there might also need to be a phrase allowing the DG Oftel some discretion in the event of a significant level of valid complaints about a service. PE (BABT) also suggested that the standard should apply to all services, but detailed approval process will only be followed in cases where services are material (and this definition can be moved to the "Requirements" section 3). The Group agreed that materiality definition could be moved to the "Requirements" section 3 and could be based on 5% of customer numbers or 5% of turnover, and that a sentence allowing the DG discretion to require that other services and products be added. RB (BT) asked that the Group consider under what grounds the DG could exercise this discretion.

Para 2.1.4: Note modified to read "A phone call is a typical example of b)"

RB (BT) asked if free calls (zero charge) are chargeable calls. PE (BABT) would prefer silence in the matter of chargeable calls, the point being that calls for which no call record has been prepared cannot be included/counted.

Para 2.1.4A: Definition of complaint

A discussion of "service" in this context took place. It was agreed that it includes rental as well as chargeable events. However it must be taken in the context where used (Para.3.3), i.e. in relation to bills.

Para 2.1.5A: Discussion took place of whether the delivery agent is the Post Office or the printing house? The point of issue when bills are presented electronically over the internet was also discussed.

The context of Para 3.4.1.3 implies the Post Office, but where the operator sub-contracts printing and delivery of bills to a single organisation, then a common sense approach will be required to applying and auditing the requirement. Similar considerations apply to other innovative approaches.

Para 2.1.2A: Discussion took place of what the account is in context of a pre-pay customer. It was decided that this was the telephone number for pre-pay customers. DD (BT Cellnet) stated that documents are not kept for pre-pay customers. Documentation should be changed to "information". Wording suggested "a record of chargeable events either a) issued by the operator to the customer or b) retained by an operator recording and allowing debits to be made from a customer account."

The group agreed to address other definitions in conjunction with consideration of the "Requirements" section due to time constraints.

Para 3.1.2 b). Modified to read "+-1 s traceable to an appropriate time reference."

AH (Vodafone) asked for an example of a charge dependent upon counting events. Pulse charging and SMS messages were examples of this sort of charge.

Para 3.1.2 c) Changed to read "+1 unit per 25,000 or –1 unit per 1000"

Para 3.1.2 Changed to read "a charge shall be determined"

Para 3.1.3 d) "or £500 total per month, whichever is the greater" added to d).

MA (NTL) asked for clarification of how the 1 in 50,000 ratio would be calculated. Wording of c) and d) modified to read "the sum of the errors in the monetary value of all items of service usage."

RB (BT) suggested changes to 3.1.3 a) and b) to take account of end-to-end standards.

Discussion took place of the definition of service usage in Para 2.1.11 and how this would relate to Para 3.1.3. Question raised about difference between charges for provision of service and usage of the service.

Para 3.1.4A: PM (Orange) asked whether incorrect rating and incorrect discounts should be reported together or separately. PE (BABT) stated that this would happen very infrequently and could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Discussion of whether all chargeable events forming part of an incorrect discount calculation should be deemed incorrectly charged events. An operator could lose the approval because of one discount mistake with a large customer. HA (Oftel) suggested that this is where the approval body could use its discretion. RB (BT) suggested with multiple approval bodies this could cause inconsistent application of the standard. JS (Vodafone) suggested that discounts were potentially a huge subject that hadn’t been fully addressed by the Group yet. BH (Oftel) asked that the Group consider how the auditor can be satisfied that discounts were being applied correctly.

Given time constraints, Chair asked for substantive comments from individual representatives. The comments were duly noted and recorded in the meeting minutes.

BH (Oftel) tabled a paper on this topic (.doc) and discussed the background. Objective is to achieve consensus within this group and then the other operators involved in the Metering and Billing workshop of April 2000. Proposed time-scales for future drafts and final issuing of the standard were stated.

It was agreed that the revised OTR003 Draft 3b generated during the meeting would be designated Draft 4a(.doc), circulated and 14 days be allowed for further comments.

An amended paper was circulated following discussion in the meeting.

HA (Oftel) tabled a paper on the statistical considerations when attempting to obtain a given level of confidence in the accuracy of bills(.doc).

The group felt that the remainder of agenda items 6, 7 and 8 had been addressed to varying degrees earlier in the meeting and due to time constraints were not discussed further. It was noted that the topics of Prepay & Top-ups, Use of Dummy Data, Quality Management Systems, Call Rounding and Time Scales for Implementation had not been addressed. Detailed feedback to comments on the OTR003 drafts was requested, especially where these were not implemented.

BH (Oftel) to inform group of date of next meeting when comments have been received on Drafts 3b/4a of the OTR and sufficient progress has been made on the next draft.

END OF SUMMARY