The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued Telecom Consumers Protection (Ninth Amendment) Regulations, 2015 that will come into force from the 1st January, 2016. Under this new amendment, TRAI has mandated originating mobile providers to credit one Rupee for a dropped call to the calling consumers as notional compensation. It is limited to three dropped calls in a day.
Every originating service provider providing Cellular Mobile Telephone Service shall, for each call drop within its network:
- Credit the account of the calling consumer by one rupee: Provided that such credit in the account of the calling consumer shall be limited to three dropped calls in a day (00:00:00 hours to 23:59:59 hours)
- Provide the calling consumer, through SMS/USSD message, within four hours of the occurrence of call drop, the details of amount credited in his account
- In case of post-paid consumers, provide the details of the credit in the next bill.
TRAI believes that the mandated regime would provide relief to the consumers from the issue of call drops to some extent and spur the service providers to improve the Quality of Service. TRAI said that it will keep a close watch on the implementation of the mandate as well as the measures being initiated by the service providers to minimize the problem of dropped calls and may review after six months, if necessary.