New Delhi: Telecom regulator Trai on Friday proposed that telecom operators compensate consumers for call drops by crediting talk-time. The telecom regulator’s action comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expressed concern over call drops saying that it affected the common man.
In a consultation paper on compensating consumers for dropped calls issued on Friday, Trai said that in the past one year, consumers have been complaining that their experience of making voice calls has deteriorated.
It said that prima facie, it appears that the lack of investment in network infrastructure by the wireless access providers may be one of the main reasons for the problem of call drops.
“The consumers have also argued that while on personal level, a call drop makes an individual annoyed, on a professional level, it reduces their productivity owing to reduced efficiencies and lost business opportunities,” said the consultation paper.
Trai noted that when the last call gets interrupted midway, the consumer would spend some time either apologising or berating about the call interruption “and then restart the conversation after picking up the threads of the last conversation; this would result in longer call duration and thereby greater call revenue to the telecom service provider.”
Despite the telecom operators claim that a majority of consumers are on “per second billing”, Trai found that 41 per cent of the total voice consumption happens on a per-minute-pulse in the country.
Trai said that one option to provide relief to such consumers could be to mandate that any call which gets dropped within five seconds would not be charged. Moreover, in case, a call gets dropped after five seconds, the last pulse of the call should not be charged. This would mean if a consumer is on a per-minute-pulse and his call gets dropped after 3 minutes and 45 seconds, call charges for only 3 minutes (and not 4 minutes) would be levied upon him. It said that other option is provision of credit of talk-time in consumer’s account as it provides direct relief to consumers against call drops. This could be through credit of talk-time in minutes/ seconds or in monetary terms.
