State of Telecom - Inputs on Solutions

Dear Friends,

Based on your inputs, below are the Key Root Causes for the current state of telecom services in India.

Please review the attached and help identify solutions that will help address these Root Causes.

Once that is done, we will put together the whitepaper for submission to to the Government and request actions.

Thanks for your participation!
Rajendra Pratap Gupta

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Telecom Services in India – Root Causes

1. Telecom companies are becoming more and more profit centred
2. Regulations from TRAI pretty loose
3. DoT is not adequately monitoring compliance of licensing requirements
4. Not enough towers installed
5. Tough to install towers in very densely populated areas
6. Government owned telecom companies still have the old working methodologies
7. The employees of government telecom operators are not customer focused
8. Annual increments of the employees is not performance based (public sector)
9. No one takes the onus of the customer problems and just pass the bucks
10. Tough competition forces them to take unethical decisions
11. Push from the higher management for higher revenues
12. BSNL and MTNL do not come under Consumer Protection Act
13. Mismanagement in MTNL and BSNL
14. Corruption in all the ranks
15. The cables and wires are not properly done at home connections. It is just tied to the trees and buildings around
16. The telephone posts are indiscriminately used by local cable operators
17. The wiring is old which leads to disturbance in the line
18. The numbers to be handled are very large but the infrastructure is not that strong
19. Telecom operators want to make money from anything and everything
20. Infrastructure for providing high speed broadband connection missing
21. No Government regulations on pricing


Telecom services in India – Key Issues

1. Bills are not sent on time
2. Transparency in tariff plans missing
3. Customer Care calls are charged instead of being toll free numbers
4. Customers have to wait longer time to talk to the customer care executives
5. Customer service is very poor
6. Problem of cross connection in BSNL
7. ‘Line busy’ message during peak hours
8. Clarity of voice not there
9. Signal transmission between various companies is not well maintained
10. Too many unwanted calls and sms from the service providers
11. Schemes get activated without customer’s consent
12. Data speed is not uniform everywhere
13. Roaming charges are high
14. E-bills are forced instead of paper bills
15. MTNL’s customer service is very unprofessional and lazy
16. Late payment charges are high
17. Cost of SMSs is increased during the festive season
18. Data plans are not economical and many cases signals are not sufficient while on the move
19. Service Provider's network towers are located in residential areas on top of residential buildings causing radiation hazards to the neighbourhood
20. Very difficulty in getting SIM's for achieving compatibility with the latest trending phones
21. Number portability between different service providers takes a long time
22. Problems with the billing
23. Broadband speed is the slowest we have among emerging economies
24. Grievance redressal system is very poor
25. Long wait in getting a new land line connection
26. MTNL phones/landlines might not work for half the month but the bill is charged for the full month
27. The price of Airtel’s 2G unlimited data plan has gone up by 15% and the speed has reduced by 55%
28. Post-paid phone disconnection is a tough task more