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- August, 2015 >> Itemised bills – an effective tool for controlling your communications consumption
Facturile detaliate – un mod eficient de a controla consumul de comunicatii
12.08.2015
Subscribers to telephony, internet or television services have the right to request itemised bills. Itemised bills must be issued, upon request, irrespective of whether the user is a natural or legal person, a subscriber or a prepaid card user. Usually, the operators charge a fee for issuing itemised bills printed on paper, whereas online bills are free of charge.
The Romanian National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) imposed on the providers the obligation to include certain information in the itemised bills. Thus, for all the three categories of telephony, internet or television services, the itemised bill will include the following details:
- charging period;
- monthly flat rate for the subscription, where applicable;
- fees charged for connection/installation/reconnection/disconnection, where applicable;
- tariffs for equipment lease/provision, where applicable;
- other services provided and the corresponding tariffs, where applicable;
- the free offerings/discounts the subscriber benefitted from, where applicable;
- overall amount charged, including VAT;
- a telephone number where an end-user may request additional information regarding his/her itemised bill;
- exchange rate, where applicable;
In addition to such information, bills issued for telephony services must include the full list of the voice/video calls initiated and of the SMS/MMS sent, as well as of the received voice calls/SMS/MMS/video calls – for which a tariff is charged. The called number or the number to/from which a charged voice call/SMS/MMS/video call was sent/received, the date and time of the calls and messages, as well as the duration of each telephone call and the tariff for each charged call and sent/received message must be highlighted. All the calls/SMS/MMS/video calls will be itemised by categories: on-net, off-net, to group numbers, international, in roaming, to Premium Rate numbers. Each itemised bill will specify the number of minutes/SMS/MMS consumed and - where applicable - the ones carried over in each category of resources included in the subscription.
As well, for mobile internet, itemised bills must also specify:
- date and time of starting each data session;
- traffic volume consumed, per session;
- overall tariff applied per session/session group, by tariff unit;
- number of hours/traffic volume included in the subscription (traffic limit);
- tariff for additional traffic, where applicable;
- additional traffic generated by exceeding the number of hours/traffic volume included in the subscription, irrespective of the period of the day/week when internet access is performed, where applicable;
- minimum traffic unit counted, and rounding manner, where applicable;
- applicable tariff per minimum traffic unit counted.
If such information is missing in the itemised bills, the users may address ANCOM, following the steps indicated here.
In Romania, there are almost 23 million mobile telephony SIM cards and more than 16 million broadband internet connections, whereas approximately 7 million households have access to paid TV retransmission services, according to the latest statistical data published by ANCOM (Infographics here).
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