BT adds weight to telco code of practise

BT has signed up to a voluntary code of conduct for billing practices driven by the Telecoms Managers Association (TMA). The company is one of the first major telco's to commit itself since the campaign was launched at the beginning of September.

The code was developed by the TMA, alongside national operator NTL, and encourages businesses to tell their telco the way they want information to be presented in their bill.

In an exclusive interview with Silicon.com, David Harrington, director general of TMA said: "There is no such thing as a bad bill. But there is very much such a thing as a bill that doesn't meet the customer's needs, in terms of the information it contains or the way that information is laid out."

The TMA carried out a survey of telecoms managers and found that four out of five of them were unhappy with their supplier, however Harrington added there are also wider grounds for the campaign.

"This is in preparation for carrier pre-selection which will come into practice in about 18 months. Telecoms managers will then be able to choose a different supplier for their network, long distance calls and local calls. With the current billing practices it would be very hard to keep track of that," he said.

Many of the UK telcos are gathering to sign up, and Harrington added: "It would be a brave telco that doesn't decide to join."