 "COAI opposes compensation for call drops")
Major telecom operators, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and BSNL and MTNL, have opposed the compensation to mobile users for call drops as proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
In their responses to Trai, the telcos have asked the regulator to focus on resolving the issues behind call drops rather than a compensation policy, which is not feasible due to various reasons. The last date for sending comments is on September 28. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has not submitted its comments yet.
“Compensation to the consumers for the call drop is not the correct approach and will not resolve the problem of call drops. Multi stakeholder alignment and collaboration is the only way to resolve matter. Trai should not make the compensation a mandatory requirement for the operators,” said Cellular Operators Association of India in its response to Trai's consultation paper on compensation for call drops.
Bharti Airtel said 100 per cent coverage was not possible in a radio network. “As per the access service licence, the operators are mandated to roll out network so as to cover 90 per cent on street coverage and because of many reasons, it is not possible to provide 100 per cent coverage in all areas at all the time. “
The provision of good network coverage inside buildings, in cluttered zones, inside high rises, in basements and in lifts might not be feasible and the signal strength in these areas might be poor. In such areas, even if a call is established, the same might drop due to poor signal strength. Therefore, any proposal to compensate the customer for the call drop in the areas where there is no coverage by ‘network design’ would effectively mean mandating 100 per cent coverage even inside the building and uncovered area, which is against the provision of licence, according to Bharti Airtel.
Vodafone said Trai's proposal to compensate consumers effectively brings down the call drop benchmark to ‘zero’, which is tantamount to enforcing impossibility especially in a mobile environment where operators are faced with constraints and challenges beyond their control.
“There can’t be any telecom network designed for having nil call drops. This is simply not possible because of the dynamic nature of traffic being generated by human behavior,” Vodafone said in its comments.
Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, BSNL, MTNL, Sistema Shyam Teleservices all of the operators in their submissions have opposed the idea of compensation.
Operators said other than Columbia, there was no instance wherein such compensation is mandated by any regulatory intervention. However, there are some instances where some operators in certain geographies are following such measures, but not all operators in those geographies are compensating for call drops. These individual operators largely adopt such measures due to their own business model.
Call drops in mobile networks happen because of various reasons — lack of radio coverage, radio interference between neighbouring cells, capacity constraints, overload in the network, among others.
Besides, the industry needs the support of the department of telecommunications and Trai to uniform guidelines across all the states for providing permission for installing more mobile cell-sites and right of way to lay additional optical fibre cable and single window, time-bound clearance should be encouraged for installation of cell-sites, COAI said.
On September 4, Trai issued a consultation paper on call drops. It proposed that users be compensated for each such happening. Users, it said, should not be charged for calls that get dropped within five seconds. If after five seconds, the last pulse of the call that got dropped should not be charged.
Trai has sought stakeholders’ comments on how a mobile user should be compensated for call drops — through credit of talk-time in minutes/seconds, credit of talk-time in monetary terms or any other method. Trai will receive comments till September 28 from all stakeholders. According to the Trai benchmark, the call drops should be less than two per cent.
In their responses to Trai, the telcos have asked the regulator to focus on resolving the issues behind call drops rather than a compensation policy, which is not feasible due to various reasons. The last date for sending comments is on September 28. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has not submitted its comments yet.
“Compensation to the consumers for the call drop is not the correct approach and will not resolve the problem of call drops. Multi stakeholder alignment and collaboration is the only way to resolve matter. Trai should not make the compensation a mandatory requirement for the operators,” said Cellular Operators Association of India in its response to Trai's consultation paper on compensation for call drops.
Bharti Airtel said 100 per cent coverage was not possible in a radio network. “As per the access service licence, the operators are mandated to roll out network so as to cover 90 per cent on street coverage and because of many reasons, it is not possible to provide 100 per cent coverage in all areas at all the time. “
The provision of good network coverage inside buildings, in cluttered zones, inside high rises, in basements and in lifts might not be feasible and the signal strength in these areas might be poor. In such areas, even if a call is established, the same might drop due to poor signal strength. Therefore, any proposal to compensate the customer for the call drop in the areas where there is no coverage by ‘network design’ would effectively mean mandating 100 per cent coverage even inside the building and uncovered area, which is against the provision of licence, according to Bharti Airtel.
Vodafone said Trai's proposal to compensate consumers effectively brings down the call drop benchmark to ‘zero’, which is tantamount to enforcing impossibility especially in a mobile environment where operators are faced with constraints and challenges beyond their control.
“There can’t be any telecom network designed for having nil call drops. This is simply not possible because of the dynamic nature of traffic being generated by human behavior,” Vodafone said in its comments.
Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, BSNL, MTNL, Sistema Shyam Teleservices all of the operators in their submissions have opposed the idea of compensation.
Operators said other than Columbia, there was no instance wherein such compensation is mandated by any regulatory intervention. However, there are some instances where some operators in certain geographies are following such measures, but not all operators in those geographies are compensating for call drops. These individual operators largely adopt such measures due to their own business model.
Call drops in mobile networks happen because of various reasons — lack of radio coverage, radio interference between neighbouring cells, capacity constraints, overload in the network, among others.
Besides, the industry needs the support of the department of telecommunications and Trai to uniform guidelines across all the states for providing permission for installing more mobile cell-sites and right of way to lay additional optical fibre cable and single window, time-bound clearance should be encouraged for installation of cell-sites, COAI said.
On September 4, Trai issued a consultation paper on call drops. It proposed that users be compensated for each such happening. Users, it said, should not be charged for calls that get dropped within five seconds. If after five seconds, the last pulse of the call that got dropped should not be charged.
Trai has sought stakeholders’ comments on how a mobile user should be compensated for call drops — through credit of talk-time in minutes/seconds, credit of talk-time in monetary terms or any other method. Trai will receive comments till September 28 from all stakeholders. According to the Trai benchmark, the call drops should be less than two per cent.