Coming down heavily on increasing number of call drops, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday offered a 15-days deadline to the telecom companies to strengthen and optimize their network.
Trai chairman R.S Sharma who met the heads of the telecom companies has warned that the regulator would have to step overboard if telecom companies do not work on minimizing call drops. Sharma said Trai would review and assess their performance after 15 days failing which the regulator will “cross the bridge” if the companies fail to do the needful.
“I have told telecom companies that after 15 days, Trai will have another test drive in Delhi and Mumbai and we will also have data of call drops relating to other places. We would support telcos relating to towers dismantled by the RWAs and municipal bodies,” Sharma said after meeting CEOs of telecom companies.
Telecom company heads who were present at the meeting include Bharti Airtel’s Gopal Vittal, Idea Cellular’s Himanshu Kapania, Gurdeep Singh of Reliance Communications, amongst others.
“We will cross the bridge when we need, but I don’t have any reason to disbelieve the operators. They are saying that they are making serious efforts to improve the situation, so why should I presume that situation will not improve,” he pointed out.
Sharma had told FE on Monday that a second consultation paper will be brought out soon so that the regulator had an exact idea about the reasons for call drops.
The meeting between the regulator and the telecom companies on Wednesday assumes significance after Trai came out with a consultation paper last Friday asking stakeholders views on whether the operators should compensate consumers for system-generated call drops. This meeting would set the agenda of a second consultation paper Trai is planning to bring out in about two weeks’ time, which would examine the issue of call drops in detail, ascertaining specific causes for call drops — what percentage is due to the lack of radio coverage and how much is due to bad handover from one tower to another, for instance.