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Mobile users will now be paid for their frustrating call drops after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) decided that telecom services providers should compensate the users. Starting January 1, 2016, telecom services providers will have to compensate users for dropped calls by paying Rs 1 for each call drop, limited to three dropped calls daily per user.
Naturally, the cellular operators are not happy with the decision. Rajan Mathews, director-general of the Cellular Operators Association of India said, "Telecom players have been trying to address the issue of call drops but compensation is not the answer. It will be a hefty payout from telcos, already saddled with high debt. Of every rupee earned by telcos, 30 per cent goes to the government in the form of a levy or fee," he said. "Compensation won't resolve the issue of call drops." Telcos plan to challenge the levy of penalty in court soon. (Read here)
But to be fair to TRAI, they had given the cellular operators enough time to resolve the issue. More than TRAI, repeated consumer complaints of call drops fell on deaf years. Following a check in September, TRAI has said it didn't find any significant improvement or change on the issue in Delhi and Mumbai. In Mumbai, no operator met the benchmark, while in Delhi, three - Airtel, Vodafone and Aircel -were found lagging in offering quality services, according to data released by TRAI on Thursday.
According to Trai, there has been a two-fold jump in call drops on 2G networks and by 65 per cent on 3G networks in a one-year period. “This was a second opportunity given to operators in the two cities to improve on call drops and quality of service. Unfortunately, they are still not up to the mark and fail the benchmarks of good quality service.” Trai said.
Meanwhile, telecom experts have called TRAI's new policy harsh and say that operators should be given time to build their infrastructure, especially erect more towers and given more spectrum.
One can agree with the cellular operators that they are unfairly being punished for the call drops as government’s administrative process and strict radiation norms have prevented them from adding new towers which can reduce call drops. But there is no excuse that the operators can give for their poor service standards.
Though the compensation has been awarded, it is still early days for the consumers to start celebrating. The biggest problem is in defining a call drop and identifying the operator to be penalised.
Telecom industry experts say that it is not easy to establish a call drop. Kartik Raja, CEO and founder of Phimetrics Technologies (Read here), an independent audit company focused on measuring (mobile service) customer experience across emerging markets says that a customer can remove the battery while talking to make it look like a call drop. Further, it will also be difficult to identify if the call drop was because of the operator of the caller or the receiver. The issue can lead to litigations and more complaints.
As far as the cellular operators are concerned, high levels of debt and high cost of spectrum coupled with low rates in the industry is preventing them from building new infrastructure. But not all companies are in the same boat. Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao said "It is not a problem of money, but problem of operating conditions. If we have more spectrum, then we also need to build many more sites. It's vicious cycle - more sites, more issues, more bureaucratic administrative problems, more drops…”
So the ball is back in the government’s court, low spectrum is at the core of the problem. When government auctions spectrum and collects hefty money from the operators, why does it not offer more spectrum? Government seems to have tied itself in a knot here. Non-commercial users like defence are allocated higher spectrum than what is allocated to commercial cellular operators.
Unless more spectrum is freed and operators are given access to erect mobile towers they will always have a reason ready for call drops.
As Narendra Gupta, CEO of Tathya Consulting says, TRAI can define what a model network should look like and ensure operators are making enough investments in each part of their network to provide good quality service to customers. Government on their part should remove the bottlenecks for infrastructure creation and even after that, if the telecom service providers do not improve their service standards, penalise them. Perhaps more heavily.
