Call drops to continue

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the Trai regulation requiring cellular operators to pay subscribers for call drops, saying it was “manifestly arbitrary” and an “unreasonable restriction” on telecom companies’ rights.

Setting aside a Delhi high court ruling upholding the Trai regulation, a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman said it was “erroneous” to say the fault for call drops lay entirely with service providers and urged Parliament to frame a law ensuring a more transparent process to frame such regulations after all stakeholders are consulted. “Payment of such penalty to a consumer, who may (also) be at fault, which gives an unjustifiable windfall to such a consumer, is also manifestly arbitrary and unreasonable,” the judges said.

The court’s order has led to fears that quality of service may fall further as telecom operators will not be under pressure. Some experts said the government should amend the Telegraph Act with stringent punishment of telecom firms, including compensation of '1 per call drop. Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the operators must “heed properly” his call to improve services.

The telecom companies’ lack of investment in 2G is being blamed as one key reason for call drops. It is alleged they are focusing mainly on data, as revenue from it is likely to triple in the coming years, while revenue from calls will fall. For example, for Bharti Airtel there is rapid growth in data services as usage is doubling annually. Sources say even spectrum from voice is being diverted to data. “The 2G network was designed years ago to handle voice, and they have put a huge load of data on it, leading to call drops,” a government source said.

“The solution is that Trai should keep the pressure up, and mandate all subscribers be on the per-second pulse rate,” said Telecom Watchdog secretary Anil Kumar. Trai has found 41 per cent of total voice consumption happens on a per-minute pulse. Also, it should keep auditing the networks of all telecom operators, and “whenever a network is found congested, they should not allow it take more subscribers”, Mr Kumar suggested. more subscribers”, Mr Kumar suggested. He said Supreme Court rejected the penalty clause because it found most of the operators are following Trai benchmark that only 2 per cent of calls should drop. “But telecom operators give self-certificate that they are following this 2 per cent norms which Trai during its drive found was false. So Trai should itself conduct the testing,” added Mr Kumar.

However, Mahesh Uppal, director of independent consultancy Com First, said that the best way is that Trai allows market forces to discipline the operators to improve the quality of services. “For example, Trai should publish the data about performance of various operators. That will put pressure on them to improve the services as there will be threat of consumers moving to better operators. Trai has this information but it never publishes it,” said Mr Uppal.

Telecom minister Prasad said, “As far the judgment is concerned, Trai regulation is under scrutiny. Therefore, Trai needs to take a call. As far as government obligation is concerned, we shall continue to persuade telecom operators to provide good service.” COAI and AUSPI, which represent telecom operators in India, said that telecom operators “have made consistent and significant efforts to optimise networks and which have largely been completed, with more than 2 lakh sites being installed in last 15 months for 2G and 3G services across the country since January 1, 2015.” The industry believes that these efforts will bring substantial conformity with Trai’s quality of standards requirements.