News
Lobby groups insist regulator has exceeded its jurisdiction despite high court ruling in favour of new rules.
Two lobby groups representing Indian mobile operators have challenged the dropped call compensation rules in the country’s supreme court.
The Economic Times reported on Thursday that the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents GSM operators, and CDMA lobby group the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI), will have their arguments heard on Friday.
The groups claim that India’s telco regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), exceeded its jurisdiction with its dropped call compensation scheme. They also argue that the rule cannot be enforced because it is impossible to accurately determine which operator is at fault for a dropped call.
Unveiled in October, the rule requires mobile operators to pay customers 1 rupee per call dropped, up to a maximum of INR3 per day. It only applies to the originating network, not the receiving network.
According to the ET, the TRAI estimates that the rule will cost mobile operators collectively 2 billion rupees (€27.29 million) per quarter. However, the mobile industry argues that it could cost them between INR8.3 billion and INR45 billion per month.
India’s operators suffered a setback earlier this week when the Delhi high court upheld the new regulations on grounds that they are in the "paramount interest of consumers," and that the mobile industry had failed to prove the rules are beyond the TRAI’s scope.
Their hopes now lie with the supreme court.
