Who will tell on AirTel?

Telecom firms play sufferer while gouging consumers

Umesh Anand

Barely does a day pass without private telecom companies having their grievances splashed across the front pages of newspapers. They always have something or the other to carp about. Going by their complaints they would seem a harassed lot, trapped in a business where there are few returns or perhaps none at all.

Apart from their self-proclaimed problems, little else is known about these companies. Nothing appears on the quiet killings that they make when shares change hands. Nor is notice taken of the shoddiness in service that they dole out even as their advertising grows slicker.

In the roiling of the telecom tamasha, the consumer, for whom the sector was opened up in the first place, has been all but forgotten. So when call charges fluctuate wildly across cities no one is answerable. Or when connectivity gets so poor that you have to yell, when the minimum technological promise should be that you are audible in a normal voice, there is nowhere that you can go lodge a complaint.

The quality of roaming services by the two Delhi operators is farcical. On more than one occasion I’ve tried complaining and given up in frustration. Far from being an improvement over MTNL and BSNL, companies like Essar and AirTel do not have even an efficient redressal service in place. AirTel recently went off the air for a full day and never even bothered to tell its customers why.

Part of the reason for this brazen neglect of the customer comes from having successfully controlled the market through a cartel. The nudge and wink with which the two companies have been toying with their charges would have invited anti-trust suits in any developed market.

There are little twists which never seem to get questioned. Take, for instance, the caller identification charge of a hundred rupees or so which you pay. Now this was a charge levied in the early days of the cellular services because telecom companies said that a mobile phone user would see the number trying to reach him and then call it from a land line. So there was perhaps a case for a charge which would discourage people from using a mobile phone as a pager.

But now call volumes have picked up hugely and we continue to pay the charge. Also where is the legitimacy in making a subscriber who makes calls worth a few thousand rupees in a month pay such a charge? There is evidence enough in his bills that he uses his phone. Now if you want an idea of the kind of killing that is being made all you have to do is to multiply the growing number of subscribers by the hundred rupee charge.

The Delhi Police are currently investigating a complaint against AirTel for allegedly fudging a consumer’s bill more than once. This is a matter which has reached the Delhi High Court. The allegation is that small amounts are added on to bills in a manner which is not easy to detect and when this is done across thousands of bills, the pickings can be huge.

The charge is yet to be proved and indeed it may not be proved at all. But one thing that the case certainly shows is that a consumer with a complaint has to have great reserves of stamina for the many hurdles he must cross before he can get a fair hearing.

The individual is invariably at a disadvantage in relation to a new technology. It is to ensure fair play and protect the individual that the regulator exists in a free market. This alone can ensure that the new technology becomes a stimulus for growth and takes the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. Sadly the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has never taken this part of its role with any seriousness.

It began by functioning as some kind of forum for the businesses in the sector. And then, as it gradually lost its teeth and its bark, it became some inert appendage tucked away in the many mysterious folds which envelop the telecom sector.

Indian new-economy companies run in much the same way as most old-economy companies did. They have pretensions of a new business ethos, but the reality is that they cultivate the powerful, manipulate policy and dictate the fineprint from which their profits come. The Indian consumer matters little in this scheme of things.
The answer clearly lies in strong regulators. But before they can be put into place you need a government that believes in them and in a marketplace where everyone’s interests matter.