Bharti Airtel sets a benchmark of 1.5% for call drops for itself

This comes a day after SC struck down compensation for call drops terming it 'manifestly arbitrary' and an 'unreasonable restriction'

Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it would implement a benchmark of 1.5 per cent for call drops voluntarily, against the two per cent allowed under the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)’s prescribed regulations for quality of services.

The company, the country’s largest telecom service provider, said for every 0.01 per cent increase in call drop rate beyond 1.5 per cent a month in each circle of operation, it will contribute Rs 1 lakh towards rural education, subject to a maximum of Rs 100 crore per annum.

The move comes before Trai could decide on whether to file a review petition in the Supreme Court against its ruling on Wednesday striking down Trai’s regulation mandating compensation for customers. The apex court had called the regulation “manifestly arbitrary” and an “unreasonable restriction” on the fundamental rights of telcos to carry on business.

 Telcos were engaged in a legal battle for the past six months with Trai, saying it was not feasible to have zero call drops as certain factors were beyond their control.

“This self-regulation on quality of service further underlines our commitment to our customers, despite the challenges of limited spectrum availability and acquisition of sites in urban areas,” said Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive officer (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel.

Other operators are unlikely to follow but people close to the development said some might come up with a new initiative/scheme related to call drops soon.

In October, Trai had come out with the regulation which was to come into effect from January 1, mandating operators to pay users Rs 1 for every call drop, with a maximum of three per day.

Telcos had challenged this in the high court here, which dismissed their petition. Operators then went to the Supreme Court, which struck down the regulation.

Airtel will report its quality of service data and amount calculated on a quarterly/annual basis, to ensure transparency. It has decided to apply this benchmark across the country, despite the constraint of difficult operating conditions in some areas, particularly in hilly regions such as Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the northeast.

Airtel had rolled out Project Leap in November, under which it aims to invest Rs 60,000 crore over the next three years to transform its network. “During financial year 2015-16, Airtel invested around Rs 15,000 crore across India towards deployment of over 88,000 sites.

This is the largest network deployment anywhere in the world outside of China and reinforces our sharp focus on building a future-ready network,” Vittal added.

It’s network covers 96 per cent of India’s population and reaches 7,885 Census towns and 779,919 non-Census towns and villages.