Trai caps call drop fine to Rs 3

New Delhi: Come January 1, you will start getting Rs 1 as compensation for those irritating call drops. Telecom regulator Trai on Friday came out with a regulation making it mandatory for telecom operators to pay Rs 1 as a compensation for every call drop to consumer. However, in a day only three calls drops will be compensated by mobile operators.

As per the new rules, the telecom operator needs to send a message to the customer within four hours of a dropped call with details of the amount credited to his or her account. For post-paid customers, the details of the credit would need to be provided in the next bill. The compensation would need to be paid to the calling customer who initiates such a voice call.

Further, the compensation will be given only if the call drop takes place due to the calling party’s network and not because of the receiving operator’s network.

The telecom operators, however, have threatened to challenge Trai directive in appellate tribunal TDSAT. According to Mr Rajan S. Mathews, the director-general of telecom operators industry body COAI, new rules would result in a huge monetary outgo. It estimated that the regulation may force the industry to shell out about Rs 150 crore every day, even if half of the consumers in the country face this problem.

Telecom stocks have witnessed selling pressure on Friday. Shares of Idea Cellular declined by 1.44 per cent to Rs 150.40, while Bharti Airtel was down 0.27 per cent to Rs 350.50 on BSE.

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, however, welcomed the decision and appealed to all operators to address the issue. “I hope the issue of call drops will become a thing of the past at the earliest, so that the penalty provision of the regulations will not be required to be invoked,” he said.

The minister also noted that “the regulator is the final authority (on tariff). Once this regulation has been framed, this becomes law of land and is binding all operators.”