Market leader Airtel also leads in generating the largest number of consumer complaints to the telecom regulator, junior telecom minister Sachin Pilot said on Wednesday.
Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Pilot said Airtel accounted for roughly one third (32.5%) of all the complaints received by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against private mobile operators so far this year. In comparison, Airtel only accounts for less than 23% of the subscriber base of private telecom operators in the country.
Airtel was followed by Reliance, which accounted for around 21% of all the complaints against private telcos and Vodafone, which accounted for 16.4% of all such complaints. Both companies have a market share of 19% in the private telecom subscriber base in the country.
The complaints were related to problem related to billing, metering & tariff and activation of chargeable value added services.
Since the TRAI has no direct jurisdiction over individual disputes, it forwarded the complaints to the service providers after noting down the details for the record.