Consumers have the right to get compensated for call drops and this was different from the quality of service guidelines that cellular service providers have to follow under the licence conditions, TRAI told Delhi High Court today.
The telecom companies on the other hand submitted before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath
That
even if consumers were facing a problem, a regulation without statutory backing cannot be created.
The telcos claimed that everyone was prejudiced against them, while referring to some of the pleas filed by consumer groups in support of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) October 16, 2015, regulation which mandates cellular operators to pay consumers one rupee per call drop experienced on their networks, subject to a cap of Rs 3 a day.
Supporting the regulation, the consumer groups said that the compensation was "societal compensation" and should not be taken away.
After hearing the final arguments of all the parties, the court reserved its judgement on the petition of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India
(AUSPI) and 21
telecom operators.
TRAI had earlier termed the call drops as a "pervasive problem", saying it amounted to "harassment" of consumers as well as breach of contract that telcos had with subscribers.
The service providers on the other hand had contended that TRAI's call drop compensation regulation was a "knee-jerk reaction" which penalised them without proving any wrong- doing.
The telcos termed the regulation as "arbitrary and whimsical" and contended that providing compensation to the consumers amounted to interfering with the companies' tariff structure and this could be done only by an order and not a regulation.
The telcos had said they were not breaching licence
conditions, as under it, they were required to maintain 90 per cent coverage and two per cent call drops were exempted. They had said the new regulation was a "parallel regime" running along with the quality of service rules.
They had also said the telcos across India had a consumer base of one billion and as per a technical paper of TRAI, 36 per cent of call drops were due to irregular use by consumers.
"Therefore, even if 30 per cent call drops occur, it would mean we have to pay Rs 3 to around 300 million customers which would amount to Rs 90 crore a day...," they had told the court.
Maintianing that less number of mobile towers were responsible for call drops, the telcos had said they are unable to install more, as over 100 permissions from various authorities were required to set up even a single tower.
Referring to litigations against setting up of mobile towers on the ground of their environmental impact, the telcos' counsel said while "everyone wants mobile phones, no one wants mobile towers close to their homes".
TRAI had earlier in an affidavit told the court that a technical consultation paper was sent to all stakeholders, including telecom firms, on the call drops issue and all their representations were considered before the rule was made.
It had also said the compensatory rule was made due to consumer complaints that call drops were happening more often.
It had further said the compensation payable by telcos would be only a "flea bite" and thus the regulation must come into force.
TRAI had told the court that telecom companies had failed to keep investments commensurate with the pace of increase in usage and growth in number of subscribers being added by them.
It had also said that lack of investment by telecom firms in network infrastructure like mobile towers, appears to be the main reason behind the "pervasive problem" of call drops across the country.
