Mobile industry associations COAI and AUSPI on Monday announced the setting up of an ombudsman to address consumer grievances in the telecom sector.
NEW DELHI: Telecom subscribers in the country finally have an ombudsman to settle their grievances and disputes.
Around nine months after the government announced the initiative, the two telecom associations — Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI) - have decided to set up the office of the Telecom Sector Ombudsman (TSO).
Justice DP Wadhwa, a retired Supreme Court judge and former chairman of the National Consumer Commission, would head the office.
All operators, both private and public sector companies, will be a part of this initiative.
Subscribers will be able to contact the ombudsman’s office directly through written communication, email, phone or fax. Significantly, no third party would represent the case. Since the ombudsman would be a private arbitrator and not a legal forum, there won’t be any advocate representing the parties, a statement by the telecom associations has said.
The recommendation of the ombudsman’s office will be binding on the operators. However, the subscriber who files the complaint can approach another forum if he is not satisfied with the recommendation of the ombudsman’s office.
While announcing the initiative in June 2006, communications minister Dayanidhi Maran had wanted it to be industry-led. However, subsequently, the industry seemed to have lost steam on the project.
COAI director general TV Ramachandran said the ombudsman scheme would be run as a 100% voluntary and self-regulatory industry initiative.
AUSPI secretary general SC Khanna said the first ombudsman’s office would be set up in New Delhi for looking into consumer grievances across the country.
Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Nripendra Misra, has been stressing the need for an ombudsman so that consumer concerns on telecom issues get resolved. Once such a forum is set up, all consumer related issues such as billing, quality of service, disconnection, roaming-related problems could be dealt with.
TRAI had recommended setting up of the office way back in 2004, when Pradip Baijal was the chairman. The office could be funded by the licence fee collected annually from the telecom sector, the regulator had said, pointing out that less than 0.01% of the annual licence fee would be sufficient to meet the expenses, without causing any undue burden on the service providers.
However, the department of telecommunications did not act on the recommendations at that time.
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