After IT, the visible boom in India is in communication. Several Companies have come up with revolutionary facilities in communication and the services are really commendable and people are benefited and enjoying. But the services come at a heavy cost although they are made out to be cheap. The overall billing system is not fully known to customers and the customers feel that they are paying more because of some hidden charges which are not verifiable and humanly impossible to keep a track of them and get them satisfactorily checked. Affordability of people to go for such facilities has no doubt increased thanks to visible prosperity in the economy, but this appears to be exploited by the service providers. Besides system and procedure to ensure against fraudulent accounting, auditing etc does not seem to be foolproof as is evidenced in Satyam Computers Ltd where fraud involving around Rs 7800 crores has come to light.
In the area of mobile services, the charges presently levied particularly under the prepaid category do not satisfy the transparency norms if any and customers end up paying what ever is asked for. The validity period under prepaid is one way of taking the customer for a ride as it is very difficult for the subscriber to have his own satisfactory terms complied with. There is no way the subscriber can come in contact with the service provider other than the recorded message route which is very convenient way of avoiding direct contact with customers. Prepaid services are generally availed of by comparatively lower strata of society and it is easy for service providers to exploit them.
It is high time the authorities wake up and ensure that the accounting by service providers is okay and there is no exploitation of subscribers. It is essential that there should be some mechanism for customers to contact service providers and get their doubts convincingly clarified. Otherwise suspicion will continue to linger in the minds of subscribers. There should be some more transparency in the method of collection of subscription money by service providers particularly in respect of prepaid service. Nothing to suspect in their services needs to be assured to the subscribers.
Dr.T.V.G.Krishnan
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2 comments:
I strongly agree to your views. Already I feel the communications sector is already eating up our economy in a major way. One definitely has to accept the fact that the backbone of all illegal and terrorist activities is telecommunications . It is extremely easy for me today to have ten different mobile connections from different service providers or actually from all service providers. Telecom Service Providers don’t seem to take any initiatives from their side to formulate and implement a strong policy particularly in respect of new connections and monitoring suspicious accounts.These companies don’t even seem to perform verification checks on its new subscribers as required by the law. All that these companies see is business, profits, volumes…and nothing else.Adding to the mess is the weak law enforcement agencies. And ultimately who is the sufferer….its our economy. To be very honest, if your prediction turns into reality … I don’t think our economy will have the capacity to bear it. So I feel, it’s high time now that Telecommunication law in our country be strengthened. After all whether it be a small issue like the transparency in billing to a consumer or a major issue like national security…it is this law that has to help us to seal the loopholes.
What TVG said is absolutely correct. He has picked up the problem in localized way, which is quite ubiquitous. It is suffered by lakhs but everybody considers it as inconsequential. But many drops would become an ocean. The service providers are benefited in a bigger way. The regulatory authorities should take a serious look over the matter but not like the regulatory authorities had done in the case of Satyam.
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