India, Oct. 17 -- Most of us, when we call our telecom service provider, are used to a variation of a message like this: Press 1 for billing. Press 2 for recharge. Press 3 for anything else. Personal experiences suggest that if we press 3, a sub-human voice will ask to choose from another tree of options. If nothing fits the problem that needs to be resolved, the voice will apologise, and either disconnect or go back to the beginning of the options. This loop continues until the exasperated caller hangs up. This isn't a uniquely Indian problem. That is why lawmakers in California have stepped in to address it. On September 28, the California governor signed a law that requires large companies to make a good-faith effort to connect a caller to a human within 15 minutes. Public prosecutors will enforce it. This move was triggered during the pandemic when a policy maker was put on hold for four hours to procure medicines for his ailing mother. Meanwhile, Spain has moved the needle more dramatically. Its customer-service law, as one trade source reports, comes into effect on December 28. It insists that 95 per cent of all calls that include essential services and companies which employ over 250 people must answer calls within three minutes if human intervention is called for. This is why what is happening in India deserves scrutiny. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a draft paper earlier this year on May 7 that discussed bringing in human intervention. As things are, it is status quo since the last comments were made in July this year. What makes this worse still is that this paper is the second one on the theme this year. The first was released on March 12. TRAI's own note says complaints reaching it rose from 44,733 in 2023-24 to 73,081 in 2025-26. But it has no mandate to handle individual complaints. What this means is that people who approached TRAI, knocked on the wrong door. TRAI reads the rise in dissatisfaction as problems with the operators' own systems. The draft's remedies are real: round-the-clock complaint centres, and a human option on the phone menu. But unlike California or Spain, India's draft does not specify things like the wait times for a human intervention. On penalties, this paper suggests operators be fined Rs.1,000. But this money is to be deposited in a government account-and not with the aggrieved customer. What do the operators think of these guidelines? Responses on TRAI's website indicate they want the fines dropped. Airtel wants more time to comply. For complaints that no other TRAI rule covers, the draft gives an operator three days to resolve it. Airtel says that it's too short a time. The company writes this is because some problems need a technician others may need the network checked. A hard deadline, they warn, "may lead to premature closure, repeated reopening, and poorer customer outcomes." The TRAI draft wants complaint centres open round the clock, up from 8 am to midnight. Operators say no. Airtel argues the phone menu and the app already take complaints at any hour. COAI, the industry body, cites the cost of night shifts. Jio sees no urgency for a human at night, since urgent cases go to the government's Sanchar Saathi portal. The shared argument is that a machine answering counts as access. Without getting into the minutiae, the operators argue that it is in their own interest to do the best they can for the customers. Both argue that in India, it is easy to lose customers and losing customers is the real penalty. Mumbai-based Varnika Goel, co-founder and CX lead at Twimbit, a research firm, broadly agrees: "I say a lost customer is the right way to see the problem, but don't think it should be left to the market alone" She warns against over-regulating. Some customers travel, run up a large bill and then complain. No resolution will please them. Regulators, she says, cannot fix that. "If a telco has failed to deliver the right service despite repeated requests, it should not be treated as a routine grievance." Such a complaint, she says, "should be flagged as a kind of complaint that can trigger action." The draft has no such flag. Jio's filing lists customers who keep re-raising the same issue among its sources of negative feedback. The operator sees noise. The analyst sees the signal. India counts 1.32 billion telecom subscribers. Each will, sooner or later, press 3. When a complaint is closed, the draft requires a survey, scored one to five. But there is no box for "I Gave Up"....