MCMC: More than 200K complaints received for communications and multimedia industry in 2020

For telecommunications services, the top category of complaints was network issues which saw a total number of 150,177 reported cases, or 72% of the overall number of complaints in 2020. — 123rf.com

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) received a total of 209,586 complaints related to the communications and multimedia industry last year.

In its newly-released Industry Performance Report 2020, MCMC described the volume of complaints received as “unprecedented” with an increase of 260%, compared to 58,139 complaints in 2019.

Telecommunications services accounted for 83% of the overall number of complaints, with most cases related to various forms of dissatisfaction over services offered by telco providers.

Complaints on network issues posted the highest number, amounting to 150,177 cases or 72% of the overall complaints received in 2020 (209,586). These same cases also made up 89% of complaints in the telecommunications sector.

MCMC in the report said the surge in network complaints began when the first movement control order (MCO 1.0) was implemented last March. At the time, there was a major spike in data traffic as people relied on Internet connectivity for learning, work and entertainment purposes.

The commission stated that home-based Internet activities led to an increase of 50% to 70% in Internet traffic demand at residential areas, causing network congestion that resulted in a 40% reduction of Internet speed.

Apart from network issues, 6% of the telecommunications-related complaints were related to billing and charging, with 9,521 cases. MCMC said these were due to disputes on hidden charges and unclear terms and conditions at point of sale.

Other top issues related to telecommunications services are service delivery (3,604 or 2%), SMS (4,102 or 2%) and mobile number portability (2,382 or 1%).

Apart from the telecommunications industry, the second highest number of complaints received were for new media with 18,733 cases, making up 9% of the total number of complaints received in 2020.

The new media industry saw an increase of 82% in complaints, compared to 10,268 in 2019. Of these, MCMC said most were related to fake content (48%), offensive remarks (27%), obscene or indecent content (13%), defamation (7%), and sextortion or love scams (5%).

The Commission in the report also said that complaints about postal and courier services have been “trending upwards” over the past three years, adding that the demand for parcel deliveries increased significantly throughout the MCO period which led to a 542% increase in complaints in 2020 compared to the previous year.

Complaints were mostly due to late delivery (59%), followed by poor service delivery (20%), missing letters or parcels (14%), poor customer service (3%) and other unspecified issues (4%).