Telcom operators to pay subscribers a penalty of Rs 5,000 for poor services: TRAI

As per TRAI’s, additional recommendation report, a penalty of rupees 5000 would be paid by a telecom company to the subscriber, if a customer faces problems like non-activation of SIM, poor connectivity or if the handset is incompatible with the SIM, and it is “beyond the control of the customer.” This applies for both prepaid and postpaid customer. According to the report, the telecom company would have to refund an additional rupees 500 per hour would be given to the customer if the SIM fails to activate within a stipulated amount of time mentioned for activation. The report was prepared as a response to the grievances of people who had complained about the TRAI approved telecom companies. After an SMS survey that was conducted by the authority in December 2016 through the National Informatic Centre, it was inferred that fifty percent of people were unsatisfied with the telecom company they used. It was found that **Matrix** and Uniconnect had the most complaints. Most of the complaints came from International SIM cards. Moreover, the 33 countries where these cards were used, maximum complaints came from United Kingdom (UK). In a response, some of the complaints these companies have cited, incompatibility of the handset, unawareness of the customer about the method of calling especially budget is fixed before itself, non-availability of tools to check network coverage amongst others.