IT Min reads out riot act to truant telcos

Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg took the decision, after chairing a meet of all stakeholders. He said, “It was noted that in recent times several issues, pertaining to the quality of service in telecom networks all over the country viz. frequent call drops, consequent inflated billing and non-transparency in the billing have been raised in the Parliament, including by way of Calling Attention Motion, at various public forums as well as in media.”

Garg apprised telecom service providers (TSP) about the falling perception in the public with regard to poor service quality in the country in general, emphasising on degrading quality in metros. 

“The public, in general, is highly dissatisfied with frequent and heavy call drops during calls throughout the day. It is not confined to peak calling hours, which shows poor quality of telecom networks,” he said.

“There is a huge ambiguity among telecom users over terms and conditions set by operators. It has come to notice that users get into the trap of false commitments offered by executives at the time of booking a new connection or changing a plan. Its fact, customers — either post-paid or pre-paid — don’t read between the lines of the terms and conditions of operators and get the connection on oral promises,” said an official of I&T Ministry, requesting not to be named.

Users have alleged that operators don’t maintain clarity on billing and data usage charges at the time of taking a new connection, or while porting from one operator to another. “Before porting, they lure customers with offers such as low call rates, free data usage, free SMS services, etc. But once your number gets ported to another operator, they start charging for data usage and SMS, saying that the offer was valid only for certain amount,” said Parimal Singh, an MNC employee, who has just ported his Idea number to Vodafone.

Not only Vodafone, even users of Idea, Airtel, Aircel and MTNL have complained of frequent and heavy call drops during calls. When Millennium Post interacted with several data subscribers, it came to notice that many, paying for 3G services, are getting 2G services. Millennium Post tried to get the comments of telecom operators, but they remain incommunicado.