The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a new directive to all service providers, asking them to create and maintain service area-wise master tables of steps taken to configure the new number series within 30 days from the date of issue. TRAI stated that this directive seeks to address issues that emerged from the authority's audit of metering and billing systems of telcos and take necessary corrective actions. The regulator says it has observed several discrepancies when telcom operators failed to configure or wrongly configured a newly launched number series in its billing system, thereby leading to default charges for the consumer or the telcos had launched new tariff plans without configuring it properly within its billing system, which led to overcharging bills for the consumer. TRAI added that it had also received several instances of consumers being overcharged due to incorrect number dialing such as pre-fixing ‘00’ or ‘+’ while making call or sending SMS to local or national numbers and it had noticed that the records related to wrong charging were not properly maintained with no specific details available like the date any specific problem started or was rectified by the telco, to judge the extent of the problem. What Data Will This Master Table Contain? TRAI stated that this newly created master table should contain details about various parameters like: - Date of receipt of intimation about the new number series - Configuration date of the new number series in the switch and in the billing system, - Date when mistakes or problems are detected…
