Trai writes to Mittal, Anil Ambani on service quality

Concerned over increasing complaints of call drops and network congestion, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has written to heads of leading operators, including Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani, to know what is being done as remedy.

“I am writing to you personally on a subject that I feel has assumed a proportion requiring your personal attention,” Trai Chairman JS Sarma said in a letter to the heads and chief executives of leading telecom service providers.

Besides Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel) and Anil Ambani (RCom), Sarma has written to Sanjeev Aga of Idea, Anil Sardana of TTSL, Marten Pieters of Vodafone, Kuldip Singh of MTNL and Kuldeep Goyal of BSNL. He, however, did not send letters to new operators as they are still in the process of optimising their networks and have low subscriber base.

Sarma’s missive comes in the wake of inadequate response from companies to complaints from subscribers.

Trai looks at various parameters to define quality of services by the operators. These include accessibility of call centres, response time to the customers, call drops, voice quality and network congestion.

“I keep getting letters from telecom subscribers expressing their frustration at the inadequate and sometimes ‘nil’ response from your call centres as well nodal officers/appellate authorities to their complaints,” he said in his letter.

“I am sure you (operators) are also receiving similar letters. While your company, no doubt, places a high value on redressing customer complaints, there appears to be considerable scope for improvement in the services being rendered by the persons in your organisation/agencies entrusted with this,” Sarma said. Some of the CEOs have submitted their replies to Trai, while others have expressed the desire to make detailed presentations, sources in the know said.