TRAI Issues Showcause Notices To Telcos Over Call Drops, May Soon Start Fining Them

Telecom operators (telcos) who did not meet the norms for dropped calls in the quarter ending March have been sent showcause notices and may soon be liable to pay a fine to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), reports Mint. The TRAI has asked telcos to abide by its new norms and benchmarks on call drops that came into effect on 1 October last year. TRAI has been assessing call drops from various telcos and has asked them to abide by the new norms starting 1 October this year.

TRAI’s assessment between January and March is based on network performance vis-a-vis the new benchmarks. Erring operators have been issued a showcause notice with 21 days to respond. “Financial disincentives” for the December 2017 quarter have been levied earlier.

Under the new Quality of Service (QoS) norms, TRAI will measure call drops at a mobile tower range as opposed to the telecom circle range. The financial disincentive or fine will be levied based on how the network is graded and will be between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh and will be capped at Rs 10 lakh.

Other issues including tower failures and network quality in underserved and unserved towns will also be looked at. Benchmarks for systems such as radio-link time out technology will also be improved to prevent operators from masking call drops.