Telecom Operators Could Face a Fine of Up to Rs. 5 Lakhs on Call Drops: TRAI

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), today announced stricter rules over call drops in the country. The telecom watchdog said that the telcos who don’t meet the norms could face a fine of up to Rs. 5 lakhs.

“Graded financial disincentives in case service providers fail to meet the DCR (drop all rates) benchmarks have been introduced, in which amount payable may depend upon the extent of deviation from the benchmarks,” the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said.

The regulator claimed that it telecom operators do not meet the benchmark, the service provider may be fined up to Rs. 5 lakhs against one parameter “depending upon the extent of deviation of performance from the benchmark.”

“In the case of consecutive contravention of the benchmarks for two-quarters, financial disincentive may be up to one and half times, and in the case of consecutive contravention of the benchmark for more than two quarters, it may be twice the amount,” said the regulator.

Trai also noted that this ‘ Quality of Services’ changes would be effective from October 1, 2017. At present, the regulator is measuring the call drops by averaging the performance of the network over the entire services area, and the results were averaged every month to rate which operator has more call drops. Trai highlighted that averaging in effect hides the poorly performing cells.

“As a result, while service providers were meeting the benchmarks, customers were complaining about the poor quality of service.” Trai also confirmed that the revised methodology would measure the call drops on a percentile basis.

“It will remove the anomaly which was getting introduced due to averaging of DCR of bad performing cells in the network with good or excellent performing cells.” concluded the regulator.

Recently, Trai said that the telecom service providers failed to meet customer satisfaction benchmark across Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka telecom circles. The report published by the regulator said a majority of customers were dissatisfied by efforts of telcos on curtailing call drops, and addressing other issues like network signal, data speed, customer care service, and overall telecom service.

Call drops are still a worrying factor for the Indian consumers. It will be interesting to see how this new Trai methodology works.