Tangled in telecom? Help is on the way

Telecom Lawyers' Association helps consumers take on erring service providers.

Tick one. You are tired of the endless plans your phone company tacks on to your bill. Your complaints are blocked by a busy signal. You don't know what to do even though you feel like suing the company.

If you have said yes to one or more of the above, here's the right number to call. The Telecom Lawyers' Association, a body of 50 lawyers, has decided to help consumers lodge complaints and slug it out with erring service providers.

The association has started off with a corpus of Rs 5 lakh, which will be used to offer legal advice at a very low cost to consumers. The advice can even be free if the consumer can't afford it.

The chairperson of the Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), Justice DP Wadhwa, said at a public forum in Pune: "We are encouraging groups of customers with common or similar complaints to approach the TDSAT if they face any problems with service providers."

Although the TDSAT does not entertain individual complaints, Wadhwa is toying with the idea of treating a single complaint as a "representative complaint with the appellate tribunal".

Although the fund has been available for the past 18 months, not a single complaint has come to the association.

"We want to dispel the feeling among consumers that they get adjournments instead of judgements in the courts," Wadhwa said.