The Hindu Business Line : Do you hear what your phone bill says?

YOU must be aware of the charges levied by BSNL and MTNL for the local STD and ISD calls made from your telephone. But how aware are you of all the other components included in your telephone bill?

Given the level of transparency in the State-owned telecom service providers, chances are you will be as confused as a majority of the people.

According to a recent telecom users survey conducted by Delhi-based Centre for Market Research & Social Development, more than 51 per cent of the telephone users are largely unaware of the actual division of the cost, including the service tax component and the method of fixing the actual value that they pay every month as duty.

Around 56 per cent users are not aware of the exact percentage of the service tax that goes to the Government.

What is more, an overwhelming 79 per cent of the respondents are unaware of the level of government share on other costs being collected by the service provider.

They have no clue that the government also collects a share from the service providers from the bill (revenue sharing licence fee) the users pay in every billing cycle.When the telephone users were made aware of the tariff structure and taxation system of the governmentby the survey agency, more than half of the respondents from the urban as well as the rural areas favoured a change in the policy with immediate effect.

The survey, conducted among nearly 1,000 representative sample of telecom service users from across the country, service facilitators and industry experts, notes that customers are in favour of paying according to the actual consumption of the service rather than on a flat basis as is the case at present.

Over 75 per cent of the participants were in favour of a system where the tariffs will be based on the usage pattern.

The demographic break-up shows that the support for this arrangement has almost equal support of the urban as well as the rural users.

High users should pay according to their usage whereas the low-end users should either be exempted or pay only a minimal amount as service charge, they said

More than 55 per cent noted that all components of costing should be clearly mentioned in the bill.

The share of the government in the revenue, apart from the service tax, should also be mentioned in the bill itself.

In addition to the 55 per cent who strongly agree for complete transparency in billing, another 33 per cent of the respondents feel that there should be transparency to some extent in the whole process of billing for consumer information.

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