Question 16/III - Revision and amendment, if necessary, of charging
accounting and associated procedures set forth in the Recommendations on
charging and accounting in the international telephone service, their
methods of application and the treatment to be applied to them
(permanent Question - continuation of Question 17/III studied in
19851988)

Reasons for the study

Given that WATTC-88 has prepared new Regulations which have an impact on
charging and accounting of international telephone service, further
study is required. These studies should cover the development, revision
and amendment, if necessary, of Recommendations required to provide the
appropriate guidance to administrations.

Independently of general problems concerning charging and accounting in
the international telephone service, special attention should be given
to studying charging and accounting principles for international service
calls.

On that point in particular, and taking into account all the
contributions introduced in the previous study period.

1. All the administrations represented in Working Party III/4 accepted
the principle that service communications should be excluded from
international accounts, although attention was drawn to the fact that
such exclusion must not entail complications in international accounting
and the expense involved in identifying these service calls precisely or
at least adequately.

2. Administrations are invited to consider the practical and financial
implications of the principle set out in section 1 above, the final aim
being to adopt a single, simple method for dealing with this type of
traffic in the accounts and to prepare an appropriate Recommendation.

3. Considering that it may be difficult or impossible for certain
administrations to identify this type of traffic accurately in the case
of automatic operation, the following points should be considered when
preparing contributions on this subject:

a) Should the exclusion of service calls from international accounting
be subject to bilateral agreement between the two terminal
administrations concerned?

b) Should the exclusion concern only automatic service calls, i.e. those
which in some cases are difficult or impossible to identify accurately?

c) In the absence of bilateral agreements, should service calls appear
ipso facto in the international accounts and, if so, should this
procedure be confined only to automatic service calls?

d) If one of the administrations in a given relation can identify
automatic service calls but the other administration cannot, what
alternative method could be equitably applied to the international
accounts?