India’s Telecom regulator just hosted a hackathon to solve consumer issues and here’s all that’s cool about it

The end may be near for unwanted value added services, unwarranted balance deduction and of course call drops. The telecom regulatory body, TRAI is going the digital way to deal with all your telecom services complaints.

Up until now the regulator diverted consumers to the grievance redressal page of the telecom operator’s portal but now they seem to have taken the matter in their own hands. Call drops have been a big concern for consumers across India and its high time something was done about it. Most of the telecom operator fall below the quality of service mark in the drive tests carried out by the regulator. Telecom regulator, RS Sharma said “Compared to other sectors, telecom is very different for addressing consumer complaints, while other sectors have large value complaints, in telecom value of complaints is very small but number of customer is one billion. We can’t expect them to head to a consumer court for a Rs. 20 issue.” To fix this, the regulator hosted its very first hackathon getting on board coders, students even professionals with 10yr experience to find a digital solution to improve the overall consumer experience.

Here are some cool solutions from the participants that the telecom regulator could put in action soon.

Portal

The idea is to develop a portal where consumers can directly come and register their complaints. Consumers will have to mention the telecom operator and the kind of issue faced by them. It will also tell you exactly what is happening with the filed complaint. The portal will also include a Bot platform.

Web Platform

When the customer uses this platform to register their complaint the complaints will simultaneously go to the regulator and the operator and there will be parallel processing of data. The regulator will keep a check on how the consumer complaint has been addressed by the operators. Here consumers can also keep a tab on all information related to their operator.

Apps

The telecom regulator is also looking at creating apps to address consumer complaints. The TRAI already has two apps running, TRAI DND and other TRAI Speed. The new app being discussed is to improve user experience. Along with registering complaints these apps will also be helpful for the consumers in terms of giving them useful information of their data usage, no. of call drops, signal strength and balance.

While these do sound like a convenient and easy way for consumers to voice their issues, we hope it’s also a faster way for the regulator to tackle them.