Trai wants powers to tackle call drops
NEW DELHI, Jun 02, 2016, DHNS
With the call drop menace yet to subside, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday asked the government for powers to penalise mobile operators as most of them have failed to meet the quality benchmark.
“As the Supreme Court in its judgment has observed that Trai does not have power to impose such (call drop) penalty on telecom operators, we will write to DoT for amendment in Trai Act to give us more power,” Trai secretary Sudhir Gupta told reporters here.
As per the test drive conducted by Trai to study the quality of services in Delhi, all telecom operators, except RCom and Vodafone, have failed to meet the benchmark.
“All telecom operators are performing below call drop rate and it has degraded further compared to previous tests,” Trai adviser Robert A Ravi said while releasing the reports.
Trai has launched a website to publish results of its test drives. On Wednesday, it published the result of test drive conducted in Delhi between May 3 and 6. The regulator found that Aircel was using Radio Link Time Out more than its peers to mask call drops.
The regulator also launched mobile app for filing pesky calls and SMS complaints.“The application is available on Android and will be soon launched for Apple iOS. It will ease filing of complaints and also help us in monitoring action taken by telecom operators on complaints,” said Trai member Anil Kaushal. The Supreme Court recently quashed a Trai rule which mandated telecom operators to compensate consumers Re 1 for each call drop.
At present, disputes between consumers and telecom operators are not taken up by consumer courts as a Supreme Court judgment of 2009 had barred seeking any such relief under the Consumer Protection Act, saying a special remedy is provided under the Indian Telegraph Act.
“As the Supreme Court in its judgment has observed that Trai does not have power to impose such (call drop) penalty on telecom operators, we will write to DoT for amendment in Trai Act to give us more power,” Trai secretary Sudhir Gupta told reporters here.
As per the test drive conducted by Trai to study the quality of services in Delhi, all telecom operators, except RCom and Vodafone, have failed to meet the benchmark.
“All telecom operators are performing below call drop rate and it has degraded further compared to previous tests,” Trai adviser Robert A Ravi said while releasing the reports.
Trai has launched a website to publish results of its test drives. On Wednesday, it published the result of test drive conducted in Delhi between May 3 and 6. The regulator found that Aircel was using Radio Link Time Out more than its peers to mask call drops.
The regulator also launched mobile app for filing pesky calls and SMS complaints.“The application is available on Android and will be soon launched for Apple iOS. It will ease filing of complaints and also help us in monitoring action taken by telecom operators on complaints,” said Trai member Anil Kaushal. The Supreme Court recently quashed a Trai rule which mandated telecom operators to compensate consumers Re 1 for each call drop.
At present, disputes between consumers and telecom operators are not taken up by consumer courts as a Supreme Court judgment of 2009 had barred seeking any such relief under the Consumer Protection Act, saying a special remedy is provided under the Indian Telegraph Act.
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