4,301complaints filed in 2015 over phone, Internet services — report

AMMAN — The number of complaints over phone and Internet services rose to 4,301 in 2015 from 2,525 in 2014, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC ) said in its latest annual report. 

The commission has dealt with 2,112 of the complaints, fewer than half, because some issues require field visits and coordination with telecom operators, which can take time, the TRC report said.  

Some 2,447 of the complaints were related to mobile phone services, up from 1,514 in 2014, while complaints about Internet services rose from 1,032 in 2014 to 1,471 in 2015. 

About 360 people complained about landline services, the TRC report said, noting that there were around 369,000 landline subscriptions in the Kingdom, amounting to around 4 per cent of the population. 

Meanwhile, there are some 13,798 mobile phone subscriptions in Jordan, amounting to 145 per cent of the population, suggesting many people use more than one mobile.

The report indicated that Internet penetration reached 83 per cent by the end of 2015 with 7.9 million users of the service.

Investments in the ICT sector in 2015 reached JD288 million, employing 4,204 workers, down from 5,304 in 2014. 

In its report, the TRC said it dealt with 19 violations related to the use of SIM box fraud, which it said causes millions of dinars in annual losses to telecom operators in the Kingdom, and affects subscriber services and experience.

SIM box fraud occurs when individuals or groups purchase SIM cards that offer free or low-cost calls. 

The SIM cards are then used — via special devices — to channel long-distance or international calls away from mobile network operators and register them as local calls on their networks, costing operators significant losses in international phone call revenues, according to Revector, a UK-based anti-fraud company.