Amid growing consumers' dissatisfaction, the Telecom Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, will hold the first round table with consumer user groups to look into their grievances in issues such as pesky calls, hidden costs in tariffs and ineffective redressal system.
“I shall be holding a round table with consumers on July 5 ... This is the first-ever round table to interact with consumers. I want to know from them what their problems are,” Mr Sibal told PTI.
Asked why telecom regulator TRAI was unable to address the menace of pesky calls and SMSes, he said, “I do not know, that's something we need to discuss. Though TRAI is holding discussions separately with consumers, but I think as a Minister I want to directly interact with the consumers to know what they want and I intend to resolve those concerns.”
Draft regulations
A day ahead of the meeting, TRAI has issued two draft regulations on protecting consumer interest and redressal of complaints, a move aimed at empowering over 860 million telecom consumers in the country.
The drafts focus on issues such as effective grievance redressal system, review of consumer centric quality of service parameters, metering and billing audit and providing information to prepaid consumers. The two draft regulations — ‘Telecom Consumers Protection Regulations, 2011' and ‘Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal Regulations, 2011' — have been placed on TRAI's Web site for comments from stakeholders by July 25.