The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has approached the government seeking powers to impose penalty in order to ensure quality of service from telecom operators. This follows the > Supreme Court quashing the TRAI’s regulation to impose penalty on operators for call drops, calling it ‘arbitrary’, the regulator on Wednesday .
“As the Hon’ble Supreme Court in its judgement observed that TRAI does not have power to impose such (call drop) penalty on telecom operators, we will write to DoT today for amendment in the TRAI Act to give us more power,” TRAI Secretary Sudhir Gupta said. The regulator also made public the results of a test drive conducted in Delhi, between May 3 and May 6, which showed that most operators do not meet the benchmark of less than two per cent call drops of their network.
Amid increasing complaints of poor quality of telecom services by consumers, TRAI had mandated that telecom operators compensate consumers Re.1 for every dropped call with a cap of Rs.3 a day. TRAI member Anil Kaushal said the regulator was looking at various options to ensure that telecom operators work to improve service quality, including reviewing call drop parameter which is set at two per cent.
The regulator rolled out a dedicated website for publishing result of test drive that it conducts. While results of Delhi are already up, those from 12 other cities will be put up soon.
In an attempt to make it easier for consumers to file a compliant against telemarketers, TRAI also unveiled ‘DND Services’ mobile application. “TRAI has developed a mobile App for easy registration of Unsolicited Commercial Complaints (UCC) to the service providers. With this App, the consumer can also check the status of his complaint. The app is available in the Google App store and Mobile Seva App store,” TRAI said.
Currently, consumers can log complain about messages and calls from telemarketers through toll free number 1909. TRAI will soon be coming out with the app for iOS too.
