Airtel, India’s largest telecommunication company has introduced an online service to let prepaid users manage their accounts.
The facility will be in addition to the online recharge facility offered by Airtel.
Most operators in India offer online recharge facilities, but rarely go beyond it. Some of the other operators, including some new ones, have similar plans and have started test deployment of such facilities.
The facilities offered by Airtel online are checking balance, recharging, starting and stopping of supplementary services, provisioning 3G, raising and tracking service requests, viewing last 5 recharge details.
Online service provisioning is likely to go a long way in resolving customer disaffection among telecom users in India.
Many customers complain about automatic starting of the so-called value added services for which deductions of Rs 30-100 per month are made from their main balance every month.
Despite the best efforts of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to rein in unscrupulous practices of some telecom operators, consumer complaints about auto-starting of unnecessary services abound.
An online portal will help customers manage their accounts better, according to consumer activists.