The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has completed the assessment for two-quarters on call drops and is all-set to penalise the telecom operators. The telecom regulator is in the final stage of issuing penalty notices to telecom operators who have not met the new call drop norms for the quarter that ended March 30, 2018. “For the quarter of January to March, we are in the final stage of issuing the penalty,” Sharma told PTI. Sharma also confirmed that the showcause notices have already been issued by the regulator the telcos. The telcos have been given a time of 21 days for reflecting on the notices received by them.
Sharma further added, "showcause notices have already been issued to erring operators and 21 days have been given for submitting their responses." However, the chief person did not reveal the details of which operator has been fined for not meeting the new Quality of Service (QoS) norms. He stated that the "Trai did not want to name and shame any telecom player."
For the unaware, the new call drop norms have been in place from October 1, 2017, and Trai has already asked telcos to submit the call drop information on their respective network based on the new call drop metrics itself. The PTI also added that Trai would be fining the telcos for their performance during the January-March quarter.
According to the new call drop norms, a telco can be fined as much as Rs 10 lakh, if it fails to meet the quality of service. “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 while issuing the new call drop norms last year.
The new call drop metrics measure the call drops on a percentile basis to remove the anomaly while averaging the overall call drops on the network. Furthermore, telcos are required to send call drop data per quarter, according to the new metrics.
