The Hindu Business Line : Ombudsman for telecom complaints favoured

Mr Vinod Vaish, Chairman, Telecom Commission, Mr Y.K. Modi, Sr. Vice-President, FICCI, Mr Pradip Baijal, Chairman, TRAI, and Mr. Rajan B. Mittal, Joint MD, Bharti Telecom Ltd, at a meet in the Capital on Saturday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Sept. 13

THE Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Chairman, Mr Pradip Baijal, today hinted at the possibility of setting up an ombudsman structure where the complaints relating to telecom sector could be looked after.

He stated that customers should have the option of getting mobile handset free with tariff plans.

To ensure that the consumer is not taken for a ride under such schemes, an ombudsman can be set up to examine any complaints either from the consumer or other operators.

In other countries, operators buy handsets and sell them free attached to a tariff scheme.

According to Mr Baijal, there was a need to consider whether the operators should be enabled to buy the handsets in bulk from the manufacturing companies so that the customers could get the best deals on handsets from the manufacturers.

"And I am sure that looking at the prices of handsets in other countries, it is possible," he said at an open house on `Spectrum management and utilisation: Challenges and opportunities' jointly organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Department of Telecom (DoT), Ministry of Telecommunications & IT here today.

He said, "we must get the handsets at the cheapest prices in India and encourage the operators into bundling the handsets along with their tariff schemes."

Asserting that it was important for everyone in the mobile sector to keep low prices, which could fetch high growth rate, he said, that a high growth rate would lead to a high denominator, which would reduce the cost for everyone.

On the issue of spectrum management, the Chairman observed that, a couple of years back, spectrum was a commodity freely available and pricing was not an issue because it was basically used by Government bodies.

All this resulted in an inefficient use of spectrum.

Spectrum "was a priced commodity now, an appropriate pricing was critical towards an efficient use of spectrum."

Mr Baijal further said, "The mobile phone connections in India would take over wireline connections by 2005. Worldwide, this has already happened. I am certain that in India mobile connections will take over wireline connections.''

Asking the industry to be ambitious and aim for growth of over 200 per cent, Baijal said, ``even with growth less than that, mobile will overtake wireline by 2005.''

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