TRAI to take steps to protect consumer interests: Principal Advisor

The issue of call drops has been a raging issue in India for a long time now. In fact, the Government of India and Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad have also been vocal on the dissatisfaction of call drops across mobile operators. After a series of discussions with the industry, the Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media that the call drop situation was improving. He said, “There is a problem about call drops, but the situation is improving.” “All the telecom operators have been told to take steps to improve quality of services,” Prasad said, adding that the telecommunications department had reviewed the situation on weekly basis for the past two months to reduce call drops. During a customer outreach programme on Thursday TRAI Principal Advisor SK Gupta said that call dropping was a big issue. He also added that Airtel and Idea had also migrated to a per-second billing instead of a per-minute plan. According to a report in the Hindu, the Indian telecommunication subscriber base has grown phenomenally, and the urban tele-density has reached 148 per cent. The report also added that rural areas were fast catching up. According to the report , the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is making efforts to improve customer satisfaction.

TRAI has said that it has evolved a mechanism to address customer concerns through Telecom Service Providers (TSP). Earlier in 2012, TRAI had launched the Telecom Consumers Complaint Monitoring System (TCCMS) to protect the interests of consumers of telecom services. According to TRAI, the objective of the website is to help customer process their complaints. However, the onus of resolving these complaints still lie with the respective telecom service provider.