The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has rejected the demand by telecom companies to withdraw the regulation mandating compensation to customers for up to three call drops in a day.
Trai on November 4 wrote to telecom companies stating that the issues raised were already considered by the authority before issuing the regulations.
“Therefore, the request to withdraw the Telecom Consumers Protection (Ninth Amendment) Regulations, 2015 has not been agreed to by the authority,” Trai said in response to Cellular Operators Association and India (COAI) and Association of Unified Service Providers of India (Auspi), representing GSM- and CDMA-based telecom companies, respectively. COAI and Auspi had jointly written to Trai chairman R S Sharma on October 27, urging Trai to withdraw the order. After Trai rejected their demand, COAI and Auspi on November 5 jointly wrote to telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, pushing forward the same argument that they had submitted to Trai’s chairman, and urging for withdrawal of the regulation on call drops.
When contacted, director-general of COAI, Rajan S Mathews, told FE that the industry would take a call late next week and will explore all remedial measures including legal if required. On October 16, Trai passed a regulation compelling telecom companies to compensate consumers with R1 per dropped call from January 1, 2016. Telcos are required to compensate for a maximum of three dropped calls per day from January 1, 2016.
The telcos had flagged issues regarding implementation of the regulations and warned that mobile tariffs would go up if they were forced to pay for dropped calls. Telcos have said the regulation may force the industry to shell out about Rs 150 crore every day even if half of the consumer base in the country faces the call drop issue.