Frustrated by call drops? Soon, mobile operators may compensate you for it

Finally the government is upping its ante against mobile operators over call drops, which have off-late become an irritant for Indian mobilephone users.

The government is mulling to direct operators to return the money charged for the dropped calls or throw in extra airtime to compensate for deficient services.
Indian users, who have emerged as the world’s second-biggest market, behind China, are vexed due to call drops.

The service quality has been deteriorating due to low call rates and fast adoption of internet on mobile.

"The idea is to ensure that a customer is not made to pay for a deficiency on the part of an operator," a key official in the telecom ministry told Times of India.

The official added that the ministry was "working aggressively" on the issue, especially as call drops became a regular phenomenon in choked networks of metros.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has been raising the issue of call drops time and again. "Call drops need to be minimised. Private operators need to reinforce their mechanism. I have directed officials in the telecom department to work on a disincentive architecture (for the operators) to address the issue," Prasad said while speaking at a conference on completion of one year of the NDA government.

The official source told TOI that the ministry also planned to rope in sectoral regulator TRAI on the issue.

"We plan to find a solution soon. It could be as early as the next six months," the source told the news daily, without giving further details.

TOI reported that TRAI’s customer satisfaction survey related to mobile services failed to recognise the issue of call drops and poor broadband connectivity.
However, as per experts, making operators pay for call drops may not be that easy.

"There needs to be a mechanism in place to recognize when a call is dropped due to network issues. Also, there should be a way to confirm this so that the customer is
aware of the deficiency," a telecom industry expert told TOI.

Meanwhile, operators blame the lack of adequate spectrum and problems related to erection of mobile towers for the growing network congestion and call drops.

CEO of Bharti Airtel, Gopal Vittal, said that they faced a stiff resistance in installation of mobile towers and needed more spectrum to handle the additional traffic on mobile networks.

But some mobile operators have decided to address the issue and are compensating customers for dropped calls.

TOI reported that Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications doesn't charge a customer for the outgoing mobile pulse where the call gets disconnected due to network problems. Similarly, Uninor gives a minute of free talk time within 24 hours for disconnections during a call.

(Image: Indiatimes)