You will be paid a rupee for Call drops from Next year!!

You will be paid a rupee for  Call drops from Next year!!

TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) made it mandatory for telecom operators to compensate consumers by one rupee for call drops with effect from January 1, 2016. The compensation will, however, be limited to three dropped calls in a day, TRAI said in a statement.

TRAI defines a call drop as "a voice call, which after being successfully established, is interrupted prior to its normal completion the cause of early termination is within the network of the service provider."

As per TRAI, telecom operators will be required to send a message via SMS or USSD within four hours of a call drop to inform pre-paid users regarding the details of the amount credited.For post-paid users,the details of the credit should be provided in the next bill.

TRAI said it will keep a close watch on the implementation of the mandate as well as the measures being initiated by service providers to minimise the problem of dropped calls and may undertake a review after six months.

Regretting the problem of call drops in India, Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao had said this week, "I am really sorry about the fact that there are call drops in India at the level where we would not like them to be.  It's linked to amount of spectrum that we have, it's linked to the ease of getting permits, right of ways."

 However Mobile Operators Association of India (COAI) Director General Rajan S Mathews said that “There’s lot of ambiguity as a result of the proposed alternatives.” COAI believed that the legislation may push a to shell out about Rs 150 crore each day even if 50% of the buyers in the country face this problem.

A senior official of Trai said the measure will be applicable even for per-second billing plans, which usually do not lead to excess payments from a customer as one is charged only for the amount he/she talks on phone. "The idea is to pay a compensation for the inconvenience that a dropped call causes."