Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communications get the maximum number of complaints from angry customers over poor service and call drops. TRAI has received thousands of such grievances in the first half of 2016 alone, with Airtel being the subject of one-third of them.
This is not even an isolated set of data, since TRAI has been observing such a trend for over 3 years. According to stats shared by Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, the authority has been the recipient of 9720 criticisms for poor services and call drops as of 30 June 2016. Airtel has the dubious honor of generating the maximum number of grievances at 3257 complaints.
Vodafone follows in Airtel’s footsteps with its own 2130 complaints. RCom and Idea Cellular round off the list with 1526 and 997 complaints, respectively. Other assorted telecom companies managed to stay below the 500 mark in the first half of 2016. Interestingly, the rankings mostly hold true for 2015 as well, with Airtel in first place followed by Vodafone, RCom, Idea, Tata Teleservices, and BSNL.
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TRAI claims that the number of complaints rose significantly between 2014 and 2015 compared to the period encompassing 2013 and 2014. As PTI points out, the complaint procedure against network companies is not very effective when it comes to actually resolving problems.
The blame for this state of affairs lies in the fact that any telecom authority, whether it be TRAI or DoT, finally has to approach telecom operators to solve the issue. This can prove to be tricky since the players themselves are part of the dispute.