Soon, telecom sector ombudsman to address consumers' grievances

Telecom consumers will soon have an ombudsman who will address grievances related to poor quality or any telecom service related query and also punish telecom operators.

Telecom Commission has approved the creation of the ombudsman, which will be set up by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will initiate the necessary amendments in the Trai Act so as to empower the regulator to set up the ombudsman. “The regulator had said they do not have the powers to create the ombudsman, therefore it is now proposed to give them the powers,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.

In addition to that, the grievance redressal mechanism for the telecom sector will also be overhauled. The telecom consumers can now also reach out to a consumer grievance redressal forum, which was not allowed earlier.

Earlier, a ruling of the Supreme Court in 2009 was interpreted that section 7B of the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 barred a consumer from seeking remedy under the Consumer Act. The complaint thus remained limited between the subscriber and the telecom company.

Under the current mechanism, a consumer can reach out to a mobile operator for any grievance and if the operator fails to resolve the complaint, DoT comes in the picture but this system has not been fully satisfactory.

“This has been a long pending demand and lot of Parliamentary standing committees have also raised this issue because we get about 10 million grievances and complains per quarter,” the Secretary said about telecom complaints.

With the creation of ombudsman, there will be time-bound redressal of the complaints. Asked if the ombudsman will have penal powers, the Secretary said this would be worked out by Trai but it would have to be an effective ombudsman.

Approval of internet telephony:

The TC, whose members include NITI Ayog CEO, the secretary from Department of Revenue, Department of Electronics and IT, DIPP has approved Trai's views on internet telephony services.

The approval means that any company holding a valid telecom licence can offer app-based calling services using wi-fi or any other internet connection. It was, however, not clear if the calls on internet telephony need to pay interconnect charges or not. The current interconnect charges stand at 6 paisa per minute. “On internet telephony, all the recommendations of Trai have been accepted except one minor technical issue, like some local numbering scheme... this will be operationalized immediately and we except this will give a fillip to voice telephony,” the Secretary said.

Trai had recommended that the service provider would be required to comply with all the interception and monitoring related requirements.

Ease of doing business:

Trai had given its suggestions on ease of doing business in telecom sector and there were 12 major recommendations that aim at providing time-bound clearances of various permits like licence, tower installation. All the recommendations have been accepted.

The regulator had recommended to DoT to work a suitable matrix, linking the penalty to the severity of the incident and recurrence of the violation for the imposition of financial penalties.

Proliferation of broadband through public wi-fi:

Trai’s recommendations on the subject have also been accepted in totality except that the TC has asked the regulator to work out an operational framework for implementation. “All the members of TC felt that this is an extremely important recommendation because it will give a big fillip to the growth of public wi-fi hotspots in India and will create a new category of service providers through the public data office,” the Secretary said.

Under the proposal, public data offices will be set up like yesteryears PCOs. Broadband connections of shops, malls, public places will be streamlined to provide wi-fi services to people in and around their premises. The move would enable entities to utilise their unused data by allowing public to consume it and in return get credit in their broadband account.

Separately, the DoT would be working on rationalising taxes in order to avoid cascading taxation. The government felt that public data offices could be a significant job creation opportunity because right now India don't have too many wi-fi hotspots and the idea is to proliferate this on a very large scale.

In addition to this, there were two items related to USO Fund. One was optic fibre connectivity between Chennai and Andman and Nicobar and the other one was BharatNet project rollout in Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, UP East, UP West, West Bengal and Sikkim by BSNL and in Himachal Pradesh by Power Grid Corporation .