Telecom Regulator Relaxes Time for Resolution of Billing Complaints

New Delhi: In a relief to telecom operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has relaxed the time by two weeks for resolution of billing and charging complaints by consumers.

Telecom regulator TRAI mandates that 100 per cent of the complaints related to billing or charging should to be resolved within four weeks.

The regulator now has relaxed the time to six weeks for resolution of all the complaints.

"The Authority after considering the views of service providers has decided to rationalise the benchmark to 98 per cent or more within 4 weeks and 100 per cent within 6 weeks, providing leverage for unforeseen cases," the regulator said.

The regulator further said that service providers emphasised that there might be some stray cases where due to unforeseen reasons there might be delay in resolution of complaints beyond four weeks and hence the benchmark of 100 per cent could not be achieved in some instances.

The authority has amended the 'the standards of quality of service of basic telephone service (wireline) and cellular mobile telephone service regulations, 2014' for the purpose.

TRAI has also revised the response time for answering customers' calls.

The regulator said 95 per cent or more calls from customers should be answered within 90 seconds. The earlier benchmark was 90 per cent calls within 60 seconds.

TRAI has also revised some other quality of service parameters like time to repair a faulty line and fault incidences.