Nongtalang College hosted TRAI’s one-day Consumer Outreach Programme

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJune 28, 2024

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) organized a Consumer Outreach Programme (COP) at Nongtalang College in the West Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya on June 27. The event aimed to raise awareness about TRAI’s initiatives to safeguard consumer interests and enhance connectivity in remote areas.

The COP witnessed active participation from distinguished guests, including G Shabong (CCA, NE-I, Department of Telecom) as the Chief Guest and D Pandey (SDPO, Amlarem) as the guest of honour. Dr. Ryan Reid Kharkongor, Principal of Nongtalang College, was the special guest.

While addressing the session, Dr. Ryan, stresses on the importance of good mobile connectivity in the college area and requested the service providers to look into the matter while Shabong urged the students to feel free in voicing their opinions and problems about network connectivity so that they may be addressed effectively.

Pandey requested the student community present to provide their honest and genuine feedback about the network connectivity to help TRAI and other stakeholders to address the problems. He also presented a presentation on cybercrime and cyber security.

There were also other presentations that were presented during the programme including a presentation on USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) projects by A. Das, Controller of Communication, TRAI. Ashi Dutta, Jt. Advisor, TRAI presented on the subject of Sanchar Saathi portal, developed by DOT (Department of Telecommunications).

A detailed presentation by Debjit Saha, SRO, TRAI educated the participants about the provisions of different consumer centric regulations, directions and orders relating to Value Added Services (VAS), Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC), Mobile Number Portability (MNP), etc.

The participants were also informed about the benefits of various Mobile apps, the Tariff portal and Network coverage maps developed by TRAI for consumer empowerment and how they can take advantage of these apps and portal. They were also briefed on various recommendations made by TRAI to facilitate growth of telecommunication and about TRAI’s new regulations, Directions on UCC and how they should be extra careful about different telecom frauds like tower fraud, fraudulent message and calls etc.

The Presentation was followed by a lively interactive session wherein participants’ query related to various aspects of telecom services were responded by TRAI team/TSPs.