Are telecom companies knowingly fleecing customers via call drops?

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is going to examine whether telcos cause call drops deliberately for some tariff plans to make more money.

Telecom secretary Rakesh Garg said some telecom operators have a system of giving free calls for call drops. “We have asked the TRAI whether this can be made mandatory for all operators and to also examine if there are any tariff plans which incentivise call drops," he said.

But, Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal had dismissed the notion and expressed that in an era of per-second billing, operators stood to gain little by making subscribers redial numbers after call drops.

But, the government rejected the claim by telecom operators that problems in setting up telecom towers were to be blamed for call drops.

"How can anyone say so? The incidence of call drops has worsened in about the last seven months and it isn't as though they are facing problems in putting up towers in the last seven months," the secretary said.

During a meeting with telecom industry CEOs, Garg shared the findings of the Department of Telecommunications' internal audit committee, which found that lack of network optimisation, inadequate investment in networks and the inability to deal with an explosion of data growth were the main causes for the deteriorating quality of services.

Meanwhile, Garg said Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had already written to chief ministers to ease rules of installing towers.

"There can't be a legislation for everything. We need to do this through discussion and persuasion. Towers have long been installed in this country without legislation and we are ready to help operators in their attempts to install more towers," he said.

On August 17, during a joint news conference by three leading telecom industry bodies, Vodafone India CEO Sunil Sood had maintained that there was nothing more that operators could do to 'fix' the situation and the incidence of call drops would only rise if the government did not help the industry in setting up new towers and controlling fears related to radiation.

They also termed call drops as normal as operators were making the transition from 2G and 3G networks to 4G.

But, the government's audit found that operators aren't investing sufficiently in 2G voice networks in the 1800 MHz band and were instead focusing on offering high-speed 4G data services in this band.

(Image: Thinkstock)