Unethical business practices by telecom companies and unethical activities prevalent in the telecom sector.

The telecommunication sector is made up of companies that make communication possible on a global scale, whether it is through the phone or the Internet, through airwaves or cables, through wires or wireless. These companies created the infrastructure that allows data in words, voice, audio or video to be sent anywhere in the world. The largest companies in the sector are telephone operators, satellite companies, cable companies and internet service providers.

Business Ethics:-

Business ethics is a set of moral values or principles that govern how a business operates or how a people behave. Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities and decisions where the issues of right and wrong are addressed. In the modern age, the most important objective of  every businessmen is to make profit by hook or by crook and they don't even think about the common man.

Thus, these telecom companies also attempt to earn profits by following unethical marketing strategies and by hiding the information and disguising the people.

Unethical Marketing practices by telecom companies:-

Airtel misleading advertisement:-

Bharti Airtel Limited also known as Airtel, is an global telecommunications services company based in Delhi, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa and also in the Channel Islands. Airtel provides GSM, 3G, 4G LTE, fixed line broadband and voice services. Airtel had also rolled out its VOLTE technology across all over India. It is the third largest mobile network operator in india and the second largest mobile network operator in the world with over 411.42 million subscribers. 

                                    

Airtel Ipl offer:-
Airtel is one of the companies, which used unethical marketing strategies and disguised the people. Last year Airtel launched its Ipl offer that everyone can watch ipl for free. they had released an ad showing that you just need to have an Airtel sim and you will be able to watch ipl absolutely free and they disguised the information that only subscription is free and you need to have a data connection for watching ipl. It was not even mentioned in their terms and conditions on their website. Many postpaid users became victim of this offer, because they watched ipl unaware of the fact and they had to pay 4,000 to 5,000 charge for their data consumption. Thus they robbed people by their unethical marketing strategies. You can understand this more deeply from the videos given below:-

Airtel had also tried to rob people by offering 2 offers with different validity and data at the same price. So that the people get fooled by their offers and they can earn more money.

Airtel had also released an ad some time ago that they are the fastest network and fooled people to get more customers. But later Jio challenged airtel and the verdict was in reliance jio's favour. Thus, Airtel followed many unethical marketing strategies.

Other Unethical activities in telecom sector:-

1.Mobile Fraud Calls:-

Phone Fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of acquiring money illegally from the people. Fraud Calls in India asking for Credit card details are increasing day by day.

Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce the losses of the public. 

There are many cases relatd to it. As on Oct 21,2019, Indian police shut down the two criminal call centres in Kolkata, which was involved in these activities.

2.Phishing:- 

Phishing is an attempt by an individual or group to solicit personal information from unsuspecting users by employing social engineering techniques. It is a fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit cards details by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. It is carries out in telecom sector by instant messaging. These fraud messages directs users to enter personal information at a fake website which matches the look of the legitimate site.

   

There are many cases for these phishing scams. As on Nov21, 2019 ,5 persons, four of which are from Jharkhand were arrested by Cyber Crime Officials for allegedly phishing bank credentials of a doctor.

Tip to tackle these fraudsters:- 

If you ever face any fraud call,

Report your experience to the FTC online or by calling 1-888-382-1222.

Conclusion:-

To Make people people aware about the unethical marketing strategies followed by the telecom companies and to make aware about the unethical activities that are prevalent in the telecom sector.

So that people will not become victim of these activies.

Thank you

Khushant Lilhare