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Department of Telecom

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Seeking comments on TRAI’s Consultation Paper on Compensation to the Consumers in the Event of Dropped Calls

Start Date :

Sep 09, 2015

Last Date :

Sep 22, 2015

00:00 AM IST (GMT +5.30 Hrs)

Submission Closed

In the past one year, consumers, at various fora, have raised the issue of call drops, complaining that their experience of making voice calls has deteriorated. In order to assess ...

In the past one year, consumers, at various fora, have raised the issue of call drops, complaining that their experience of making voice calls has deteriorated. In order to assess the problem, TRAI, in the months of June/ July, 2015, conducted special drive-tests on certain routes of Mumbai and Delhi, in which, it was found that Call Drop Rates of most of the telecom service providers (TSPs) were higher than the permissible limit of ≤2% set by the Authority. TRAI has prescribed financial disincentives on TSPs for failure to meet the quality of service benchmarks (including call drop).

TRAI is of the view that the problem of call drops needs to be examined in its entirety and requires adoption of a multi-pronged approach. It is also considering to make it mandatory for the TSPs to make periodic disclosures about (i) their network capacities and (ii) the steps taken to optimize their networks to address the problem of call drops. On the lines of drive tests undertaken in the cities of Mumbai and Delhi in June/July, 2015, the Authority would be conducting such drive tests across various cities in the country. While several steps are being contemplated, the Authority cannot remain a silent spectator to the problem of call drops encountered by the consumers.

In this background, TRAI has issued a consultation paper and has solicited comments with appropriate justification on the following issues:

Q1: Do you agree that calling consumers should not be charged for a call that got dropped within five seconds? In addition, if the call gets dropped any time after five seconds, the last pulse of the call (minute/second) which got dropped, should not be charged. Please support your viewpoint with reasons along with the methodologies for implementation.

Q2: Do you agree that calling consumer should also be compensated for call drops by the access service providers? If yes, which of the following methods would be appropriate for compensating the consumers upon call drop?

(i) Credit of talk-time in minutes/ seconds
(ii) Credit of talk-time in monetary terms
(iii) Any other method you may like to suggest.

Please support your viewpoint with reasons along with the methodologies for implementation.

Q3: If the answer to the Q2 is in the affirmative, suggest conditions/limits, if any, which should be imposed upon the provision of crediting talk-time upon call drop and usage thereof.

Q4: Is there any other relevant issue which should be considered in the present consultation on the issue of call drops?

Through this forum of My Gov, TRAI invites the comments of stakeholders on the above issues by 21st September, 2015.

Consultation Paper on Call Drops

Press Release regarding Consultation Paper on Call Drops

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Showing 508 Submission(s)

Ashutosh Tiwari_18 10 years 10 months ago

if call drop happen for any caller ,the telecom company must provide 10 min to 20 min talk time to customer account . the dropped call will not be charged . if call drop happened more then 5 times to 10 times a day then telecom company waive whole day call charge . if in particular circle call drop cases raise from 1000 + or 10000+ limit per week. company will get a warning from government . and I case company get such warning more then 3 time .license must be cancelled . Imposing penalty will not solve all problem . we need to take the license back if services are not provided properly . licence can be resale to other vendor by auction to Improve service .

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Anirudh Damani 10 years 10 months ago

Q4: The number of towers per carrier in a geographical area should be directly linked to the number of customers that carrier is carrying. Beyond a certain limit the carriers additional load should be shed to other carriers (that have extra capacity) at a rate that is decided by TRAI (like a bank’s parking/borrowing facility provided by the RBI) or if the other carriers don’t have capacity then the carrier should be disallowed from adding new connections unless new tower are brought in.

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Anirudh Damani 10 years 10 months ago

Q3: Carriers that don’t resolve call drop issues don’t deserve limits on their overall outgo to customers. The issues of call drops has been plaguing consumers for a very long time and except for lip service the carriers have done little else to improve their network.

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Anirudh Damani 10 years 10 months ago

Q2: The calling customer should be compensated for the call drops and instead of penalizing the carrier the consumer that experiences call drops should be compensated like a bug identifiers are compensated by websites like Facebook, Google, etc. They should get the value of their entire phone call returned to them and Rs 5 per dropped call in addition for reporting a bug.

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Anirudh Damani 10 years 10 months ago

Q1: Yes I agree that if a call is dropped in 5 seconds there should be not be a charge for the call to the consumer.#TRAI should also keep tab if a number of call drops are taking place within a certain geographical area. The tower in that area maybe overloaded or there may be some other impediment that the carrier should rectify immediately. A time limit should be put on that time to rectify pending which the carrier is penalized for each call drop in addition to being not charging the consumer

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Prasadnair 10 years 10 months ago

If someone uses a jammer, is it possible to drop the call and immediately claim the balance????is there any possibility to commit a telecom fraud??? If yes, what is the mitigation??

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Prakhar Verma 10 years 10 months ago

Q1. Yes, calls should be charged if they drop out before completion of pulse either a minute or second.In the short term every base station operating below TRAI standards should be splited for more call accomodation while temporarily reducing its coverage area.In the long term new sites should be installed by the operator. Q2 credit of talktime in pool balance with validity of minimum 60 days Q3 Validity should be 60 days with usage of minutes/seconds for STD/Local calls.

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PIYUS PRASAD HARICHANDAN 10 years 10 months ago

I agree. The real issue is consumer shouldn't have to provide proof or calling Telco but compensation should be credited back to consumer with help of some audit software.Because this is the biggest problem for telecom consumers in india.I am from Odisha state and we are the biggest sufferers of this large scale mass fraud of the Telecome Operators.Airtel is the big daddy of all cheaters.After a limit there should a policy to cancell their license.

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KRIPAN AYUDH ROY 10 years 10 months ago

Q1:Agreed. TRAI should develop some monitoring system for the quality of service provided to consumer in case of call drop, and if the service provider is violating rules, than call drops should not be charged on calling consumer. Q2: Agreed to Point (i), Such compensation should be acknowledged through SMS to the calling consumer and duly intimated to TRAI. Q3: provisions for such compensation should be made unconditional. Q4: The service providers should stop sending useless calls & SMS.

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Hardik Shah_14 10 years 10 months ago

Q1. The Calling customer should not be charged for a call that gets dropped. Q2. Credit of twice the talk time in monetary terms should be provided to the calling customer. Q4. Serious consideration should be given towards ensuring that defaulting Telcos do not add new customers, till such time they can provide decent levels of service to the existing customers. They should also submit reports of complaints received from customers in this regard to concerned authorities. quarterly basis.

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