The Indian telecom carriers have been asked by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to ready a mechanism to ensure compensations to consumers in case of call drops starting January 1.
Trai Chairman RS Sharma today said the Indian telcos must take steps to prepare themselves to implement this mechanism. He added that the regulation on call drops can’t be overturned by a competent authority, nor annulled, modified or cancelled. The authority however showed willingness to examine the issues raised by Indian telcos on compensation. Sharma said that Trai will examine legally if Trai can review the decision or not and further convey the decision to telcos within two weeks.
According to Trai guidelines, Indian telcos will have to compensate consumers Re 1 for every call drop that occurs due to fault in their network, which is limited to a maximum of Rs 3 a day per consumer.
GSM and CDMA lobby bodies COAI and AUSPI had written a letter to Trai that implementation of the rules may lead to higher mobile call rates. In addition, telcos also questioned selection of the areas by the regulator for testing call drops.
Trai already held a meeting with Indian telcos on implementation of call drop compensation rules and steps taken by them to improve quality of service. The meeting was attended by Bharti Airtel India MD and CEO Gopal Vittal, Vodafone India MD and CEO Sunil Sood, Idea Cellular MD and CEO Himanshu Kapania, Reliance Jio Infocomm MD Sanjay Mashruwala and MTNL Director Sunil Kumar. COAI DG Rajan S Mathews and AUSPI Secretary General Ashok Sud were also present.
