Telcos fail call drop test, Trai seeks penal powers

Worried over worsening call drop menace, telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday asked the government for powers to penalise mobile operators as most of them have failed to meet the quality benchmark in this regard.

“As the Supreme Court in its judgement has observed that Trai does not have power to impose such (call drop) penalty on telecom operators, we will write to DoT today for amendment in Trai Act to give us more power,” Trai secretary Sudhir Gupta said.

The Supreme Court recently quashed a rule of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) which mandated telecom operators to compensate consumers Rs 1 for each call drop with upper limit at Rs 3 per day.

At present, disputes between consumers and telecom operators are not taken up by consumer courts as a Supreme Court judgement of 2009 had barred seeking any such relief under the Consumer Protection Act, saying a special remedy is provided under the Indian Telegraph Act.

Trai on Wednesday published the result of test drive conducted in Delhi between May 3-6, and in next 15 days will publish result of test drive conducted in 12 cities.

While telecom operators claim to have improved network by installing additional mobile towers, the report said “All 3G networks; 2G networks of Airtel and MTNL and CDMA network of RCom have shown degradation in performance compared to previous drive test”.

In the latest test drive conducted by Trai in Delhi, MTNL failed on all network based quality of service parameters. “Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, Air-cel and Idea need to further improve the Call drop rate performance. The CDMA firms and MTNL need to improve across all parameters.”