Industry welcomes Supreme Court's ruling on call drops regulation

NEW DELHI:The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI), have welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court to set aside the Regulation issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 16thOctober, 2015 and judgement of the High Court of Delhi in the matter which mandated telecom operators to compensate consumers for call drops at the rate of Re. 1 per call drop, up to a maximum of three calls per day starting 1 January 2016.

While the telecom industry waits to receive and understand the final contours of the judgement, the telecom industry, which serves over One billion Indians through its networks through affordable mobile services, remains committed and completely aligned with the TRAI's concern‎ to ensure customers enjoy the best experience on our networks. To this end we are committed to working with TRAI on focusing on the core issues that impede the delivery of quality of service such as availability of affordable spectrum and timely permissions for locating our cell towers.

The industry is also extremely thankful to the Union Telecommunications Minister and the Government of India for their unstinted support to help enhance network and infrastructure installation processes and will work with the Government to take forward the Digital India vision.

The industry has made consistent and significant efforts to optimize networks and which have largely been completed, with more than 2 lakh sites being installed in last 15 months for 2G and 3G services across the country since Jan 1, 2015. The industry believes that these efforts will bring substantial conformity with TRAI’s QoS requirements.