Billag threatened with closure after loss of collection mandate
With the loss of its mandate to collect radio and TV license fees, Billag's very existence is threatened. About 250 employees are at risk of being laid off.
Billag generates well over 90 percent of its revenue from reception fees. In addition, the Swisscom subsidiary collects copyright royalties for the Swiss Cooperative Society of Music Authors and Publishers (Suisa).
At the moment, it is still too early to say how things will develop after the From for the collection of reception fees with Billag, spokesman Dominik Müller told the SDA news agency. A closure is conceivable. Finding new customers is unlikely to be easy: The collection market is already saturated, Müller said. The first priority is to continue the job professionally until the end of 2018.
Billag also expressed its disappointment at the decision. After all, around 250 bilingual and qualified employees are involved, said Müller. In addition, Billag had only been briefly informed two hours before the official announcement.
End after 20 years
The Fribourg-based Swisscom subsidiary has been collecting reception fees on behalf of the Swiss Confederation since 1998. Previously, the fees were collected automatically with the monthly telephone bill. However, during the partial privatization, Swisscom was obliged to continue collecting the fees until 2002 at the latest in order to ensure continuity. As a result, the subsidiary Billag took over the task. In 1999, it was awarded the contract in a public tender. Billag was also able to defend its mandate thereafter.
According to information on its website, Billag serves over three million customers. It issues around 4.5 million invoices per year. In return, it receives CHF 54 million annually from the federal government from the almost CHF 1.3 billion in reception fees. That is a share of 4.4 percent.
Billag announced in November that it had applied for the mandate from 2019 after the end of the tender process.
