TRAI issues notice to Airtel
A showcause notice was issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to telecom and DTH operator Airtel earlier this week, sources said, adding the notice was in connection with the recent issues of blackout faced by some viewers of its Direct-to-Home (DTH) services during transition to the new tariff regime. The company has been given three days' time to respond to it, they said.
The regulator on Monday issued a direction to all the distribution platform operators (DPO) that there should be no withdrawal or discontinuance of television channels on their platform by any TV service provider, the TRAI said in a statement.
"We have over 15 million customers who are being migrated to the new tariff regime. Due to massive surge in last-minute requests, particularly on January 31 and February 1, few customers may have experienced some delays in provisioning of channels,” an Airtel spokesperson said.
"Customer experience is of paramount importance to us. We remain fully committed to ensuring compliance with all TRAI guidelines and will file our response to the notice," he added.
The new tariff regime for cable and DTH TV services, which mandate consumers to select channels of their choice -- either individual channels or bouquets -- came into effect on February 1.
TRAI also said in its statement: "The authority has noticed that due to heavy rush, the website of some DPOs have crashed intermittently and a little inconvenience was caused to come subscribers due to sporadic local issues. However, by and large the migration of subscribers to the new regulatory framework has been smooth."
