New Delhi: Warning telecom companies of penal action over the persisting call drops menace, regulator TRAI Wednesday said their performance will be reviewed after 15 days and it can "cross the bridge" if situation does not improve.
While top executives of leading operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Reliance Communications were conveyed this message in a meeting called by TRAI, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also said at an economic summit that the imposition of penalty can not be ruled out if the companies fail to do their part to check frequent call drops.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also rejected the operators' argument that it was inadequacy of spectrum that was leading to call drops.
"The argument that spectrum is less is no longer valid, because spectrum has suddenly not shrunk. Rather, the spectrum has increased," TRAI Chairman RS Sharma said after meeting the CEOs of telecom operators.
Call drops have become a severe problem in recent months and concerns have been raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well in this regard.
Sharma said the companies were informed during today's meeting that TRAI would review the situation after 15 days, even as they were assured of support in dispelling fears related to radiation from the mobile towers.
"I have told them that after 15 days we will have another test drive in the city of Mumbai and Delhi and we will also have data relating to other places. We will measure if there is any improvement in the situation or not," he said.
Asked if penal measures will be taken if operators fail to show any improvement, Sharma said, "We will cross the bridge when we need, but I don't have any reason to disbelieve the operators (as yet).
"They are saying that they are making serious efforts to improve the situation, so why should I presume that situation will not improve."
To a question on whether the networks can be fixed in 15 days, Sharma said the operators are saying that they were making efforts.
Meanwhile at the Economist India Summit here, the Telecom Minister said the government is presently not thinking of any kind of penalty imposition, but he does not "rule out the option if the situation doesn't improve."
"Naturally, if there is an issue, it needs to be addressed by those who are in the game," Prasad said, while adding that the government is continuously making all efforts on its part and the operators should also do their bit.
"We first cleared the spectrum sharing decision, now we have cleared the spectrum trading also. So, whatever are the demands of telecom operators for growth, we have done that," Prasad said, while adding that the telecom operators need to offer good service to get help from the government.
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The industry leaders present in the TRAI meeting included Bharti Airtel's Gopal Vittal, Gurdeep Singh of Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular's Himanshu Kapania.
"So if it goes down south, which means that things are deteriorating... But if it starts going north, than we know that people are working on those things. They are saying they are making efforts and everybody enumerated the efforts, I have no reasons to disbelieve," the TRAI chief said.
On the issue of radiation fears, Sharma said the regulator will work with the concerned authorities and help spread the message that fear of radiation from tower causing health hazards like cancer is completely misplaced.
"One issue where we offered our support is related to the towers dismantled by the RWAs and municipal corporations. We assured them we will bring out the study which we have conducted. We will work with them and the Minister has already offered that towers can be put up on government buildings," Sharma said.
Asked what was the reaction of operators on the consultation paper on call drops, Sharma said it was not discussed in detail, but some sense of disappointment was shown that TRAI has come out with such a paper.
"The issue of consultation paper and taking it forward is quite independent of the issue which we discussed today," he said.
TRAI has proposed that service providers should compensate mobile subscribers for call drops and poor quality of services.
The regulator is also considering making it mandatory for telecom operators to disclose their network capacities periodically, as it feels that the call drop problem needs to be examined in entirety.
On asked whether the operators are willing to share their netowrk details, Sharma said, "They will have to. I made that very clear that they have to share... Some things I don't want to know like who there customers are... At the same time, the capacity and how much congestion is there, those things have to be shared with TRAI. There is no doubt about it."
He said the broader issue that was discussed today was that they should have a mechanism of data interchange which is more automatic, more real time and more machine to machine.
Sharma said the basic issue raised during the meeting is that call drop is a serious problem and it needs to addressed.
"We apprised them of the test drive results and it is very clear from those results that except one or two operators, everybody was falling short of prescribed standards of call drops and other service quality related parameters," Sharma said.
