TRAI Hackathon

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India - TRAI is hosting a two-day hackathon , to address the issue of telecom complaint handling. The aim of the event is to bring together highly skilled Software Developers to develop a portal which will efficiently manage the complaints of the telecom subscribers across the country and to improve overall consumer experience.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regulates telecom services in India. TRAI has provided the required direction to the evolution of Indian telecom industry through the regulations it has made and directions it has given to the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) to follow. At present there are around 1.04 billion total telecom subscribers in India. They have large numbers of issues with regard to the services that they receive. Around 10.2 million complaints were filed by telecom subscribers in July-Sept Quarter in 2015 on account of ineffective service, billing & other telecom service related problems.

Under the TRAI Act (which governs the functions of TRAI), while protection of consumer interest is within TRAI’s ambit, resolution of individual consumer complaints is not. Thus TRAI has to be an effective facilitator for the consumers and robustly protect their interests for the holistic growth and development of the telecom industry.

To ensure that complaints are effectively addressed by the TSPs, TRAI has put in place a detailed regulatory mechanism whereunder all the telecom service providers have to follow a structured method of complaint redressal – this includes establishment of physical centres as well as provide online solutions. TRAI monitors implementation of its regulations through regular audits and surveys of the TSPs systems. However, as is the nature of audits and surveys these are sample based, which allow many genuine complaints to fall through the gaps in the various TSPs complaint redressal systems.

TRAI is therefore examining the establishment of an online portal that will manage consumer complaints in a holistic and comprehensive manner. A system that would provide all complainants detailed and accurate information about their grievance. In designing such a system it has to be recognised that with increasing gross volumes of complaints annually, the magnitude of India-scale data is humongous. Such large data processing needs specialized big data and analytics expertise. Thus, there needs to be a technologically equipped and automated system to monitor the effective complaints, validate the problem and provide detailed information to the complaining consumer in an effective and comprehensive manner.