Your home broadband has been dead for two full days, you have missed work calls, and the helpline keeps saying “we are working on it”. Can you get money back? Yes. Under TRAI rules, when your operator's service in your district or licensed service area stays down for more than 24 hours, postpaid users are owed a rent rebate and prepaid users are owed a validity extension for the affected days. This page explains the rule, who qualifies, and exactly how to claim.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) notified The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wireline and Wireless) and Broadband Service Regulations, 2024 (regulation 06 of 2024) on 2 August 2024, and it came into force on 1 October 2024. It replaces three older quality-of-service regulations.
In plain terms, the rule gives you:
This is your entitlement as a paying subscriber. You do not need to prove loss or fight in court for the basic rebate; it is meant to be applied by the operator. The The RTI Playbook also explains how to use information rights when a public body or licensee stonewalls you.
The rebate is designed for an outage affecting the operator's service across a district or licensed service area for more than 24 hours, for example a fibre cut, a tower power failure, or a regional network breakdown. A single faulty connection at your home, where the rest of the locality works, is handled as an individual fault repair under your service terms rather than as a guaranteed area-wide rebate. Either way, you should still raise a complaint and ask in writing whether a rebate or extension is due. If the operator declares an area outage, the rebate applies automatically for the affected days.
| Point | Postpaid subscriber | Prepaid subscriber |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Rebate on monthly rent or plan rent | Extension of plan validity or usage |
| How it is measured | Proportionate to the number of affected days | Equal to the number of affected days |
| Where it appears | Adjusted in your next billing cycle | Added to your existing plan validity |
| Trigger | Service in district or service area down over 24 hours | Service in district or service area down over 24 hours |
| Action needed | Raise complaint, keep docket number, check next bill | Raise complaint, keep docket number, check validity |
Keep your own record of when the service went down and when it came back. A simple note of dates and times, plus the docket number, is your proof if you have to escalate.
For drafting complaints and follow-up letters, you may find the tools at righttoinformation.wiki useful, and the AI RTI Drafter helps if a government body or public-sector operator is involved.
TRAI does not just rely on goodwill. The 2024 regulations carry financial disincentives that the operator must pay for breaching quality benchmarks. These are charged per QoS parameter or benchmark, which makes them sting.
| Situation | Financial disincentive |
|---|---|
| First failure to meet a quality benchmark | Rs 1 lakh per benchmark |
| Repeated failure in two or more later months or quarters | Rs 2 lakh per benchmark |
| Each further repeated failure | Rs 3 lakh per benchmark |
| False reporting on a benchmark, first offence | Rs 2 lakh per benchmark |
Separately, TRAI has set a graded scale of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for different scales of violations and for filing false reports, replacing the earlier flat penalty. The exact amount depends on the nature and scale of the breach. The point for you as a consumer is simple: your operator has a real money reason to fix outages and to honour your rebate.
The rebate is built for an outage affecting the operator's service across a district or licensed service area for more than 24 hours. A single faulty line at your home, where the area is otherwise working, is treated as an individual repair. In both cases, raise a written complaint and ask if a rebate or extension is due.
It is proportionate to the number of days the service was down beyond the threshold, applied against your monthly rent and adjusted in your next bill. Keep the outage dates and the docket number so you can check the bill is correct.
Prepaid users have no monthly rent, so the operator extends the plan validity or usage by the number of affected days. Confirm the added validity days after the service is restored.
Each operator must run a two-tier system: a Complaint Centre that gives you a docket number, and an Appellate Authority. File a written appeal with the Appellate Authority quoting your docket number. If that fails, you can approach a District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission under the Consumer Protection Act 2019.
The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wireline and Wireless) and Broadband Service Regulations, 2024 were notified on 2 August 2024 and came into force on 1 October 2024, replacing three older quality-of-service regulations.
If your area service has been down for more than a day, do three things today: write down the outage dates and times, raise a complaint and secure the docket number, and diarise to check your next bill or validity. If the operator stalls, escalate in writing to the Appellate Authority, then the consumer commission. Keep every reference number; a paper trail is what turns a refusal into a refund.