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Notwithstanding efforts to go paperless by the Narendra Modi government, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has decided to continue with the existing regulatory provision of printed copies of phone bills.
Per the regulatory provision, printed copy of bills shall be made available to landline and mobile postpaid subscribers free of cost, as a default option, and e-bills can be provided with subscribers’ explicit consent, TRAI said.
“Keeping in view the demographic structure of India, literacy rate, size of non-e-literate population, limitation of senior citizens/ disadvantaged groups and rural population, time is still not ripe for making e-bill as a default option,” it said.
The authority said it believes in the policy of inclusion and encourages service providers to speed up their efforts of educating the customers about the benefit of e-bill and incentivise them for opting for e-bill.
“It is hence decided that the current provision of providing hard copy of the bill free of cost as default option as per present provisions shall continue,” TRAI said.
However, if any customer opts for receipt of the bill through e-mail, instead of hard copy, the service providers can do so after obtaining explicit consent from the consumers, the Authority said adding that it will continue to watch the progress of subscribers opting for e-bill and if necessary, this provision would reviewed a year later.
The regulator had undertaken consultation on “Review of extant provision for sending the printed bills to postpaid subscribers of landline and mobile services as default option” on November 15, 2018 seeking views of stakeholders. Various stakeholders expressed their views on the subject by way of written comments, counter-comments and deliberation during the open house discussion held on February 15, in Delhi.
During consultation, the telecom service providers strongly pleaded for changing the default option to electronic bill citing environmental concern such as cutting of trees for paper; boost towards Digital India mission; cost increase of printing bills as and; no explicit storage required to keep hard copy of the bill.
However, other stakeholders wanted to continue the present provision for the default option of printed bills because of various reasons including 50 per cent of the population is not e-literate and it should be the consumer's choice to opt for e-bill.
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