Airtel leads telcos in user complaints in India
India's telecoms regulator received 12,292 consumer complaints against telcos in the last four years, for matters relating to high rates, wrong charging, and value-added services.
| Telco | No. of Complaints |
| Airtel | 3,437 |
| Vodafone | 2,190 |
| Reliance Comms | 1,783 |
| Tata Teleservices | 1,706 |
| Idea | 920 |
| BSNL | 941 |
| MTNL | 172 |
There were 3,566 complaints for the year up to February 7, 2014 alone, said Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora, according to PTI. This was in a written reply to Lok Sabha, or Parliament of India.
Market leader Bharti Airtel took the brunt of the complaints, accounting for 3,437 of them over the past four years.
"The total number of complaints received by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in respect of major service providers during the last three years and the current year relate to billing tariff, wrong charging and VAS, including charging higher call rates," Deora said, in the report.
He added the telcos have adhered to regulations to set up complaint centers in each service area, including the set up of a hotline. India has been recently pushing the telco industry to meet higher standards. In December, it fined them a total of 5 million rupees (US$80,900) for failing to meet quality of service (QoS) benchmarks.