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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) received a total of 4,133 service-related complaints against telecom operators in 2011-12, revealed Minister of State for Communication and IT Milind Deora told the Parliament on Friday.

The TRAI registered 1,165 service-related complaints against Bharti Airtel, 654 for Vodafone and 647 against Reliance. As many as 438 complaints were lodged against TataTele Services, which includes Tata Docomo GSM and Tata Docomo CDMA, while 326 complaints for Idea Cellular. State-run telcos, BSNL and MTNL also featured in the list. During 2011-12, as many as 466 complaints were registered against BSNL, while 165 for MTNL.

According to the minister, for basic telephone service (wireline), non compliance with the Quality of Service (QoS) benchmarks included fault repair, metering and billing and response time to the consumer for assistance.

For mobile phone service, non- compliance features call drops, network congestion and operator response within 60 seconds. As per licence conditions, telecom operators are accountable for maintaining the performance and QoS.

Separately, the operators Vodafone, Tata Tele and Aircel have come under the scanner of the TRAI for allegedly causing losses to the government by booking higher revenues towards STD calls. According to an Economic Times report, the TRAI has noted that the telcos were booking higher revenues in their STD business to avoid higher licence fee.

According to TRAI, the three companies were levying lower 'carriage fee' to carry STD calls of rivals, when compared to the charges imposed on their own-long distance arms. “Though regulations provide flexibility to National Long Distance operators to offer carriage within prescribed ceiling of Rs 0.65, but booking of higher revenue in LLD business amounts to saving of licence fee by the service provider and loss of revenue to the government," says Trai.

Source: ET