IANS
New Delhi

The telecom watchdog yesterday said mobile phone operators will have to compensate subscribers for call drops from January 1 next year at the rate of a rupee for each failure - a decision that has left the industry upset with legal help kept as an option.
A notification from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said the consumer would get a credit of Re1 per call drop, limited to three such occurrences per day in a 24-hour cycle. The mobile operators also have to send customers an SMS within four hours.
The regulator also defined what constituted a call drop.
“A call drops means a voice call which, after being successfully established, is interrupted prior to its normal completion - the cause of the early termination being within the network of the service provider.”
The watchdog said it had examined the representations of telecom operators who maintain that some issues like poor spectrum allocation and difficulties in setting up towers that were beyond their control contributing to call drops.
It said it was for this reason that the authority has kept the compensatory mechanism simple so that the consumers understand the same easily, and the operators are able to implement it as well.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COIA), the industry representative body, said the watchdog has not defined the cause or the reason for the dropped calls.
“As per the norms, operators need to ensure 90% coverage of district headquarters and 30% over blocks. There is no regulation to guarantee coverage in buildings,” COAI chief Rajan Mathews said, alluding that the industry was adhering to these norms in the best possible manner.
“Our first preference is to engage in a dialogue with TRAI to get clarifications over call drop norms, keeping in mind there is time till December 31. But if no proper resolution comes out of the dialogue, we will have to seek legal help to protect our interests,” he said.
Mathew said the regulator’s decision was not the way forward and operators should be provided the assistance to set up telecom towers. “If this is done, I can fix the call drop issue in 90 days,” Mathews said, adding the local authorities had made the industry give up 350 towers in Delhi alone.
The effective date for call drop compensation comes a day after the watchdog doubled the penalty for poor quality service and said an operator will now be fined up to Rs1 lakh for the first non-compliance of benchmarks in a quarter compared to Rs50,000 earlier.