A small error in how Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) calculates the duration of calls made by cellphone users could be adding NT$400 million (US$13 million) per year to the bottom line of Taiwan's biggest telecom operator, the Consumers’ Foundation (消基會) said yesterday.
The foundation held a press conference after a complaint from a Chunghwa Telecom subscriber who discovered that Chunghwa Telecom charged her for longer than her calls lasted.
After comparing call duration records on her phone and her monthly phone bill, the subscriber found that the duration of 52 of the 66 calls she made in May were calculated differently, foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said.
Analysis of the phone bill showed that there was one extra second in 47 calls and two extra seconds in five other calls in the bill, Cheng said, adding that the extra seconds calculated on the bill cost the subscriber an extra NT$3.97 in May.
The firm has 8.75 million cellphone users. If it charged every user an additional NT$4 per month, it would earn at least NT$400 million more per year, Cheng said.
Chunghwa Telecom acknowledged that the time for each call does not end until its machine receives the signal from the users’ cellphones and therefore there was “a minor difference,” he said.
Cheng urged the National Communications Commission to ask operators to calibrate their machines and refund subscribers.
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