Seeking withdrawal of the new regulation on compensating callers for call drops, the telecom industry on Tuesday warned that the “grossly unjust” rules will lead to increase in mobile tariffs for consumers. The operators added zero call drop is impossible to achieve.
In a joint letter to the telecom regulator TRAI, the two industry bodies – COAI and AUSPI – said the regulation in fact will lead to a sharp increase in call drops rather than reducing them as countless customers will cause the calls to drop to obtain Rs 3 per day as compensation.
“To recover this cost of compensation, telecom operators will have to increase tariffs leading to customer spending more to purchase telecom services,” the letter added. Earlier this month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) mandated telecom service providers to pay subscribers Rs 1 for every call drop they experience on their network, subject to a cap of three call drops a day, starting from January 1, 2016.
The two associations, which together represent all telecom operators in the country, said as per estimates these regulations will lead to a 3 per cent hit on revenue and 7-8 per cent hit on mobile EBITDA.
“Wireless networks cannot be designed for zero call drops. Therefore, in a cellular mobile radio network, having full coverage and capacity everywhere is an oxymoron. The regulation on compensation assumes ideal conditions with a possibility of zero call drop, which is impossible to achieve,” the letter said.
In the letter, which comes ahead of the meeting of operators with the regulator over the call drop issue on October 29, the associations point out that the regulations will only increase “pointless disputes/litigation” and consumer mistrust.
Further, it added that a majority of operators have already taken steps towards converting all their pre-paid subscribers to per second plans to address the customer’s concerns of charging of the dropped calls. The option is also available for post-paid users.
“… this new mandatory compensation payable by the originating operator that too for complying with the mandated QoS norms, is not only self-contradictory, a double jeopardy. It is also coercive, grossly unjust, and its unintended impact will be catastrophic…We humbly request the Authority to withdraw a defective regulation though it may have proceeded with all good intentions,” the operators said in the letter.