New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India told the Supreme Court that while telecom companies’ annual revenue was a staggering Rs 1.42 lakh crore, they would have to pay a mere Rs 256 crore as compensation for dropped calls which was not even their one day revenue.
Making this submissions on behalf of Trai, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi rejected the claim of the companies that the compensation would run into Rs 4,000 crore a year. The cellular operators are liable to compensate the loss suffered by subscribers due to call drops, Trai submitted.
The AG told a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman that the problem of call drops was due to cellular service providers’ greed for profit without making commensurate investments for upgrading technology.
He said India and China had almost the same number cell phone users, but telecom companies in that country had invested 10 times more than their counterparts in India had done here. This was largely due to cartelisation of cellular service providers who numbered just four or five.
He justified the Delhi High Court verdict upholding the orders of TRAI that service providers must compensate subscribers for call drops.
Mobile towers are obsolete, says A-G
The AG told the Supreme Court that while the entire West and even some tiny countries had replaced cell-phone towers with better technology equipment that was neither obtrusive nor an eyesore, the companies in India were still using such towers as they did not want to invest and the regulator was duty-bound to ensure that the telecom players provided quality service at reasonable rates.
The Bench wanted to know as to why the companies should pay compensation since call drops did not result in extra expenditure for the users or additional income for the service providers as call charges were mostly based on pulse rates or the total duration of the calls, rather than per call.
The AG said the regulator would have to ensure that the user was not put to inconvenience or delays arising from call drops. While dismissing the petitions by COAI and others challenging the telecom regulator’s order, the Delhi HC had held that there was no dispute that the penalty was meant for ensuring quality of services which was the responsibility of TRAI. Notified on October 16, 2015, the penalty was to be paid from January 1, 2016.
