Telco removes Eircom from its billing process


11 Feb 2008

An alternative telecoms provider has employed the existence of a stronger service level agreement (SLA) to effectively remove Eircom from the billing process and provide its customers with a single bill.

Dublin-based telecoms firm and call minutes brokerage, MinuteBuyer, said that from this week its line rental service is now available to all its SME customers.

Until now, SME customers of the company were presented with both an Eircom line rental bill and MinuteBuyer’s call charges bill.

“This only increased the administrative burden in terms of time and cost for many businesses,” explained MinuteBuyer director, Shaun Hayden.

He said the single billing system was made possible by important changes to Eircom’s wholesale line rental (WLR) service, in particular the provision of a stronger SLA.

“From a customer’s perspective, we are taking two bills out of their hands and replacing them with one. We delayed making this move until now because we weren’t happy with the previous SLA between the incumbent and alternative operators.

“You couldn’t provide a service where you would have to wait three days for Eircom to fix a fault on a customer’s line. Therefore, a more realistic SLA was crucial.

“We are more comfortable with the new response mechanism that is in place. We’re now responsible for customer service and offer a more efficient service,” Hayden added.

By John Kennedy