Mtnl To Issue Monthly Bills

In an effort to stem growing unpaid bills, improve collections and reduce processing costs, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) plans to generate monthly bills for phones with national and international long distance dialling facility.

MTNL wrote off Rs 125 crore in 1997-98 of a total Rs 975 crore in unpaid bills. Like the department of telecommunications (DoT), MTNL generates bills on a bi-monthly basis. Chairman S Rajagopalan said MTNL was also planning to generate bills for phones without long distance facility on a three- or six-monthly basis.

MTNL will also introduce payment of bills by credit cards. Rajagopalan was speaking at conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry on "Telecom Billing, Customer Care and Fraud Management" here yesterday. Rajagopalan added that as part of MTNL's strategy to improve customer service, the board of directors had earmarked Rs 10,000 per employee to train them in customer relations and information technology.

C V Rajan, chief general manager, MTNL, clarified that at 33,000 employees with the telecom public sector unit, the "retraining scheme" would cost Rs 33 crore. Rajagopalan admitted that there was a genuine need for improvement of customer relations among MTNL staff.

Rajagopalan stressed on the need to implement information technology solutions "for a state-of-the-art system". Constant policing of 3.5 million phones on MTNL's network was a Herculean task in absence of information technology and lack of fast action and competition, he said.

P S Saran, member (services), Telecom Commission, said the process of computerisation in the sector had started. For a sector growing at the rate of 20-22 per cent, Saran said the billing and collection system in rural areas needed a thrust. Despite 1,200 single windows to redress consumer complaints, collection still remained a difficult task, he said .

DoT has outstanding bills of over Rs 2,500 crore. MTNL, on the other hand, by virtue of being a corporation has been forced to write off the unpaid bills that have been pending for three years. It may have to write off unpaid bills of another Rs 100-150 crore.

"There are very few computers being used in MTNL today. The implementation of computers in an organisation can do wonders for us. An effective billing system can be used as an information-giving and an effective marketing tool," he felt.

The battle is against subscriber fraud as well as tariff fraud, the latter being a high-tech manipulation, he added.