SLT to refund excessive tariff charges next month

Following a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year requiring Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) to refund excessive tariff charges from January 1, 2007, The Sunday Times FT received several letters from SLT subscribers alleging the telecom giant had arbitrarily disconnected their telephone services.

One subscriber wrote- "SLT has disconnected the telephone service of many customers under the pretext of non-payment of bills which is a high handed act of SLT." He said SLT had not carried out the recent order of the Supreme Court in which they had to work out the amounts due to each customer and include it in the November 2007 invoices.

The Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), Kanchana Ratwatte said the refund for each customer would be reflected in this invoice and they would receive it sometime in December. "The November bill will come in December and whatever amendments to the bill will be reflected in December," he said. "There is an 8.72% reduction from the January 1, 2007 from each and every bill up to October 30, 2007. That means you go on the basis that you have paid an extra 8.72% of the bill up to the end of October so there will be a reduction of 8.72% of what everyone has paid." If a customer paid Rs.1000 in January, a refund of Rs.87.20 will be made to the customer for that month.

Just prior to the Supreme Court order, SLT ran the revised billing formula on their billing system and identified each tariff barrier and how each barrier would be affected by the revision. Using Call Detail Records (CDR), the formula was run through the system in March 2007. The amount refunded to each customer based on the new formula differs according to their monthly charges. Ratwatte said SLT is taking an overall revenue reduction of 8.72%. However, he explained that the revenue reduction might lead to more usage, a positive development. He added that there is so much idle time in the system and that consumers pay rental as idle capacity so SLT should further reduce tariff charges. (NG)