Trai orders telcos to compensate consumers

“Before the recommendation is implemented, the root cause of the call drop should be analysed”.

But there’s a catch: phone users with a penchant for yakking over their phones for hours are unlikely to be compensated if their calls fade away 120 seconds after they are patched through. Operators in India hold on an average 12-15MHz of airwaves vs 40-45MHz globally. call drops are becoming a severe concern these days and the matter was also raised by PM Narendra Modi in this regards.

According to the sources, the nature of compensation is yet to be decided.

On Wednesday, the drop in quality of services surfaced in the meeting of Vodafone Group Plc chief executive Vittorio Colao and finance minister Arun Jaitley on the issue.

Finally, telecom regulator has flexed its muscles to taunt telecom operators for dropped calls.

Telecom regulator Trai has stated that there isn’t any significant improvement in the call drop challenge in Mumbai and Delhi as operators are lagging on numerous fronts in assembly the requirements.

“The Authority feels that these measures will act as a sufficient deterrent against prolonged non-compliance and will further improve the quality of service in a time-bound manner”, the regulator said.

It said the regulation would come into effect shortly.

The regulator had in June and July carried out drive exams in Mumbai and Delhi, which confirmed unsatisfactory community high quality. “For non-compliance with customer-related parameters the financial disincentives imposed is Rs 50,000 per parameter”, the TRAI release said.

“While the increased penalty will be imposed if a telecom operator is in breach of any service quality parameter, including network availability and connection maintenance, it is primarily to ensure that operators provide better voice call services”, said an official present at the meeting.

Earlier, Communication and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had told journalists that the TRAI had been directed to penalise any operator encouraging call drop. But the government as well as the regulatory authority has maintained that telecom companies are not doing enough by way of network expansion. It has also asked government offices to allow telecom towers to be erected on their premises. “Because of radiation norms, a limited number of cell towers can be placed within an area”, said Hemant Joshi, partner at Deloitte Haskins & Sells.