Posted: 20th Aug, 2011 By: MarkJ

The head of broadband ISP supplier
BE Wholesale,
Dan Cunliffe, has warned that Ofcom's recent move to fine TalkTalk (
Tiscali) £3 Million over its
repeated billing mistakes (
here) has merely "
bought to light one of the most fundamental issues in the broadband market ... ensuring that customers are billed correctly".
The head of BE Wholesale, Dan Cunliffe, told ISPreview.co.uk:
"[The] £3 million fine on TalkTalk and Tiscali has bought to light one of the most fundamental issues in the broadband market; who is responsible for monitoring data usage and ensuring that customers are billed correctly?
Resellers should be providing adequate monitoring and measurement techniques to protect customers from overcharging. However, today’s news highlights holes in billing solutions and a lack of transparency in the market. A safer approach to eliminate this risk lies with wholesalers, who play a fundamental role in ensuring that resellers provide accurate billing and account for irregularities on customer’s bills.
We at BE Wholesale take the approach that if you have a clear and transparent pricing structure in place you can effectively manage errors in customer billing. By offering a fixed price model for unlimited usage, as well a more traditional usage based on a 95th percentile model, we allow partners to optimise their spending based on total consumption. Offering a complete billing solution service adds value to existing partnership, deepens trust between resellers and ISP’s, allows end-users to have a more transparent pricing structure by avoiding unexpected payments, and helps build upon a company’s reputation as a quality internet provider."
Obvious self promotion aside, it should also be remembered that, in TalkTalk's case, the provider was both an ISP and a supplier at the same time.
TalkTalk claims to have resolved its problems and proof of that will be in whether or not Ofcom reprimands them again in the future.