Tightening regulations, telecom regulator TRAI today raised the penalty on telecom operators to 5 lakh rupees for poor mobile service quality, including call drops. The regulator will also now measure call drops on the basis of data collected on the performance of telecom towers and not from area offices of telecom companies.
The penalty amount will be imposed if the operators are unable to meet the benchmark set for the quality of service in two quarters. The penalty will kick-in if call drops in a quarter average more than 2 per cent of the total traffic in a telecom circle. The penalty will go up to 10 lakh rupees if violation continues for more than two quarters.
Factors like call drop, availability of mobile towers, time taken for a call to connect, and voice quality are part of TRAI’s quality parameters.
TRAI had last October increased the penalty provision to 2 lakh rupees from earlier 50 thousand rupees for the first violation and one lakh rupees for subsequent failures in case of network related quality parameters.
