India’s mobile operators have warned that being forced to compensate customers for dropped calls will cost 540 billion rupees (€7.6 billion), which could jeopardise future network investment.
According to an Economic Times report late last week, the warning was issued in an open letter sent by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) to telecoms minister Ravi Shanker Prasad.
In a bid to improve quality of service, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in October ruled that from 1 January 2016, operators must compensate users to the amount of 1 rupee (€0.01) per call dropped, up to a maximum of INR3 per day.
The new rule will not apply to the receiving network, only the originating network, which has four hours to notify an affected user of the compensation. Prepaid users will have their account credited, while contract customers will see their compensation on their next bill.
Unsurprisingly, the COAI slammed the new rule, arguing that it punishes operators for problems that are often beyond their control.
The COAI and AUSPI also wrote to the TRAI requesting a review of the order, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
According to last week’s ET report, the TRAI said the issues raised by the telcos were taken into consideration when the rule was drawn up, and therefore it had chosen to reject the request for a review.
"In case our plea is not accepted, then we will have to take the cal l on whether to go court on the matter," said Ashok Sud, secretary general of AUSPI, in the report.
