Ombudsman for telecom mooted

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(Trai) today said an office of Ombudsman needed to be established to look after consumer complaints in the telecommunications sector.

The regulator said considering the growth in the number of service providers and subscribers, the prevailing structure was not adequate to redress consumer grievances.

"In the present set up, the individual consumer complaints are beyond the scope of the Trai or the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal and approaching the consumer courts is the only recourse available. Since the consumer courts are not dedicated to telecom related problems, an intra-sector arrangement would be more responsive to consumer complaints in the sector," the Trai said.

The regulator has proposed a revenue-sharing regime to fund the office of Ombudsman. "A very negligible percentage of the revenue of the service providers (far less than 0.01 per cent) would be sufficient to meet the expenses and it would not cause any undue burden on the service providers," the Trai said.