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    Call drop issue: Trai seeks more powers to penalise errant mobile companies

    Synopsis

    Trai’s move comes weeks after the Supreme Court struck down its order mandating operators to compensate consumers Rs 1 for each call drop.

    ET Bureau
    NEW DELHI: The telecom regulator wants more powers to penalise errant mobile operators, a top official said on Wednesday, after declaring that most telcos failed to meet the minimum criteria for quality of services in New Delhi. “We will write to DoT today for amendment in the Trai Act to give us more powers,” Telecom Regulatory Authority of India secretary Sudhir Gupta told reporters on Wednesday.

    Trai’s move comes weeks after the Supreme Court struck down its order mandating operators to compensate consumers Rs 1 for each call drop with the upper limit at Rs 3 per day. At present, disputes between telecom operators and their subscribers are not taken up by the consumer courts.

    The Supreme Court had barred any such relief under the Consumer Protection Act in 2009, saying a special remedy is provided under the Indian Telegraph Act. “We have sought powers to levy penalties for consumer redressal,” Gupta said.

    Image article boday
    Financial authority to levy penalties on telcos has been a longstanding demand of the regulator. Trai member Anil Kaushal said the regulator is looking at options to ensure that telcos improve service quality and the regulator may even review the call drop parameter, which is set at 2% of all calls made from an operator’s network.

    Trai currently has fixed a disincentive of up to Rs 2 lakh for those exceeding the 2% quality benchmark, including call drops, in a quarter in one telecom circle.

    The regulator on Wednesday published the results of a test drive conducted in the capital from May 3 to 6 and will announce the findings of a similar exercise carried out in 12 cities in the next 15 days.

    “All 3G networks, 2G networks of Airtel and MTNL and CDMA network of RCom have shown degradation in performance compared to previous test drives,” Trai said about the test in New Delhi. State-run MTNL also failed on all network-based quality-of-service parameters.

    “Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Aircel and Idea need to further improve the call drop rate performance. The CDMA operators and MTNL need to improve across all parameters, in order to offer acceptable levels of service,” the regulator said.

    “In case of call drop rate, most of the operators except Reliance 2G and Vodafone 3G are not meeting the threshold.”

    COS MASKING CALL DROPS? The regulator said Aircel had increased values of Radio Link Time Out usage. RLT technology keeps a call connected when the signal is poor and allegedly can be used to mask call drops.

    “Most operators have improved their network performance. However, in case of network of Aircel, it is noticed that the RLT value in most of the cells has increased. If RLT values are assumed to be 40 in case of Aircel, its present call drop rate of 2% would increase to approximately 5.8%,” Trai said in the report.

    It’s been alleged that RLT can be used to prolong a call until the caller or receiver terminates it and the user is billed for the entire duration despite not being able to talk for the whole time.

    Aircel did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the matter. The Cellular Operators Association of India has rejected allegations that RLT is used to mask call drops. It said RLT is just one of the parameters in deciding how long a call should be sustained if the signal quality drops below a certain threshold.

    Kaushal said the RLT value for telecom operators is a matter of discussion and the vigilance and monitoring arm of the Department of Telecom, TERM Cell, is investigating the matter.

    The regulator has started a website that will feature results of the test drives that it conducts every quarter. It also launched a mobile application for filing complaints related to pesky calls and SMSes in an easy manner.


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