Unnecessary Call Out

The maturing of the deregulated customer premises equipment (CPE) market in South Africa has guided ISP`s decision to introduce a levy that will be charged when its technicians are called out to attend to a fault that resides in the customer`s private equipment and not the ISP network.

This was deregulated through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, giving ISP`s customers the freedom to choose their CPE suppliers and equipment, along with the responsibility to maintain it themselves.

For obvious reasons ECF cannot be expected to carry the cost of dispatching a technician to every problem a customer has without recouping the costs it has been incurring through unnecessary dispatches.

These charges will not apply to customers who have a maintenance service level agreement (SLA) with ECF OR where it is found to be a problem on ECF dish or network.

The customer equipment refers to all equipment in the customers premises. This will exclude the ONT in the case of fibre and the Poe in the case of Wireless.

Residential customers will be charged R320 for an unnecessary maintenance visit, while business customers will pay a R456 levy per unnecessary visit.

Customers are urged to check their equipment thoroughly before they request a site visit from a technician.