NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecom (DoT) plans to hold meetings with operators and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on January 10 on the drop issue.
In its with the CEOs of telecom companies, DoT will discuss the current situation on call drops as well as new service quality rules implemented by Trai in October last year, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said here on Monday.
She added that DoT will hold a separate meeting with Trai to discuss the issues related to call quality on the same day.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference to mark the completion of the first phase of Bharat Net project, Sundararajan said, “We want to communicate to the operators, the concerns of the government on call drops... We will ask operators to get their act together.”
Sources told Express that the January 10 meeting is crucial as a solution to the long-pending issue of call drops may be found. “The parties concerned would really like to end it as soon as possible,” the source said.
Back in 2016, the regulator had ordered operators to compensate users with Rs 1 for every call drop. However, the Supreme Court struck down a related regulation terming it “arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent”.
In October last year, Trai had come up with a new Quality of Service (QoS) formula, according to which operators will have to pay a penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh per circle in a quarter if they fail to meet voice quality benchmarks.
The new call drop rules will see the first instance of reporting under the new formula.Sundararajan also said the service providers had made commitments on improving the infrastructure.