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| Sunday,13 November 2005 |
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TRC calls off Calling Party Pays system by Gamini Warushamana The Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) has decided not to go ahead with the proposed Calling Party Pays (CPP) system following strong public protests for the new telephone tariff system. "We have to balance the interests of all parties, not only the mobile phone users, said TRC Chairman Aruna Amarasekara addressing journalists on Wednesday in Colombo. Over 90 per cent of the people at the public hearing opposed the CPP system. We are not penalising the mobile phone users, but we have to consider low income, and marginalised people who use public telephones or pay phone systems as well as cost to government institutions, businesses and retired people who mainly use fixed telephone services, Amarasekara said. TRC took this decision following strong public opinion from January this year under Section 12 of the Sri Lanka Telecommunication Act No.25. The public said that existing call charges, specially fixed access call charges are very high in Sri Lanka when compared to the other countries. The public stressed that though the number of mobile subscribers is greater than the fixed access subscribers the users of fixed access telephony are much higher. The reason being that the people who cannot afford to have their own telephone, depend heavily on the fixed access telephony such as pay phones or communication centres and they have serious affordability problems even with the existing charges. Representatives of pay phone companies and communication bureaus told the public hearing that their users are highly price sensitive and not in a position to afford further price increases, the TRC said. According to the views expressed by the public, most of the fixed access customers or their family members have mobile phones with tariff plans consisting of one minute free incoming. They selected mobile tariff plans considering their communication requirements and usage patterns. Some people subscribed to tariff plans with comparatively high monthly rental but more free incoming call charges while others went for low rental and few incoming minutes. They strongly protested against any price mechanism under which they would have to pay an additional charge, the TRC said. Amarasekara said that licences have been given to three telecom operators to provide CDMA connections to meet the one million new telephone line target within two years. A restricted licence was given to Tritel for the CDMA connection to expand the pay phone system. Tritel is operating 90 per cent of the public telephones in the country. |
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