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by Tony Poulos
This may be the era of the 'e' (as prefixed to commerce) and the 'i' as (prefixed to phone), but in telecoms for some reason, e-billing (or i-billing) isn't cutting it. Tony Poulos asks "Why not?"
We hear about climate change and caring for the environment day-in and day-out, but many of us don’t think twice about opening the mail each day and sifting through all those paper bills, the biggest and meanest of which is usually from a telco. Mine certainly is.
I buy and test products from a few providers and my main telco provides me with three post-paid mobile services, my broadband access, my digital home and office phones, public WiFi access, HSPA dongle for my notebook and a myriad of cable channels bundled into packages that Einstein couldn’t decipher. For these services I receive no less than five bills on a monthly basis and one other (whenever I use that particular service by mistake!).
Each bill averages three to five pages in length plus the envelope it is sent in, plus another pre-paid envelope supposedly provided to send back my cheque payment that I have never done in seven years because I pay electronically through my bank account.
If we count each of the envelopes as a sheet of paper, I calculate that my telco bills from the one supplier amount to about thirty sheets of paper per month, almost or 360 per year. According to Conservatree (www.conservatree.com), one tree, 40 feet (12m) tall and 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20cm) in diameter produces 8,333 sheets of virgin A4 paper.
One ream (500 pages) needs 6% of a tree to be produced. A quick calculation tells me that my annual telco bills use up about 5 per cent of a tree. To add to my other vices I am now a tree killer!
But that is not of my own doing or choice. Although e-billing is offered by many of the world’s leading service providers, many lag behind. My service provider still does not offer e-billing to its post-paid customers. So while my bank is able to provide everything electronically, as does my credit card company, the company that is the bastion of access to all things electronic does not!
You have to ask: at a time when mobile service providers are replacing diesel generators with solar power for their remote base stations, why we don’t they also convert their paper bills into electronic ones and do the environment a big favour?
I know it’s a legal requirement in some countries to provide a physical bill, but surely we could lobby against this archaic and costly practise where it occurs.
And, after all, many new online services (such as Skype and others) against which traditional telcos must compete offer only electronic billing.
The reduction or total removal of paper bill printing would save the industry millions of dollars per year and the savings would be reflected directly in the bottom line.. not to mention the tree line! And I think customers could easily be convinced to opt for e-billing if it was was offered with a discount on the monthly subscription, or if a surcharge was levied for paper bills.
How many users peruse the call details on bills anyway? And for those that do, electronic bill presentment systems can make the perusing function more swift and efficient anyway, and should customers really want a bill they can touch and feel they can always print out the electronic version themselves.
Now before I start getting ‘hate mail’ from the owners of printing establishments and paper millers, let me point out that most of the processes in producing paper bills are automated. In fact, the same process to format a paper bill is often used to format the e-bill as well. It’s not as if millions of people will lose their jobs.
So if your company doesn't offer e-billing, then maybe it’s about time you suggested they look into it. |
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