Letter extract:

The General Conditions of Entitlement - Provisions on Metering and Billing

You will probably be aware that a new regulatory framework for electronic communications enters into force from 25 July 2003. One of its consequences will be that the individual and class telecommunications licences issued under section 7 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 will cease to have effect and be replaced by a General Authorisation for communications providers, supported by General Conditions of Entitlement. On 19 March the DTI published the draft General Conditions which are available on www.communicationsbill.gov.uk/pdf/Implementation_Con_Doc_AnnexC.pdf . They were subject to a public consultation that closed 16 May 2003.

This letter is intended to draw your attention to draft Condition 12 on "Metering and Billing" which will apply to all providers of electronic communications services. By contrast, under the existing licence regime Metering and Billing requirements only apply to operators running their systems under individual licences but not to service providers operating under a class licence such as the Telecommunications Services Licence (TSL) or International Simple Voice Resale (ISVR) licences.

Paragraphs 12.1 and 12.2 of the condition will apply to all providers of public electronic communication services and requires that bills are only issued to end-users where the amounts billed represent services actually provided to them. Records must be kept so as to enable the provider to demonstrate compliance with this requirement.

Paragraphs 12.3 - 12.8 of the condition impose additional requirements but only on those providers with an annual turnover in excess of £40m derived from the provision of publicly available telephone services. Such providers will be required to seek approval for their Total Metering and Billing System (TMBS) from one of the three established approval bodies (BABT, BSI, NQA) by no later than 31 December 2003. This is the effect of the requirement in paragraph 12.5 which obliges providers not to keep in use a TMBS for which an application for approval has not been made by this date.

There is no target date for when approval of the TMBS should be achieved as it would not be realistic to take a "one size fits all" approach to different TMBSs which vary in terms of their size and complexity. However the condition requires approval to be achieved "as soon as is practicable".

The standard that TMBSs will be required to comply with in order to achieve approval was originally published as OTR 003: 2001 and published at www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/ind_guidelines/mbst0102.htm. For the purpose of the new regulatory framework it is now embodied in the Oftel Metering and Billing Direction referenced in paragraph 12.9 of the Condition which will be published early next week and posted in the www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/licensing/index.htm area of the Oftel web-site.