Trai imposed Rs 11 crore penalty on telcos for poor service: Govt

Trai imposed Rs 3 cr penalty on Aircel for not meeting set quality parameters for 2G service

Telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has imposed over Rs 11 crore penalty on service providers, highest on Aircel, for poor service quality including call drops, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday.

"Trai imposes financial disincentives for non-compliance with the benchmarks for Quality of Service parameters including call drops," Sinha said.

According to the data shared by Sinha, the Trai has imposed over Rs 3 crore penalty on Aircel for not meeting set quality parameters for 2G service and Rs 1.56 crore for poor 3G service quality.

Penalty of Rs 2.27 crore has been imposed on BSNL, Rs 1.64 crore on Reliance Communications (including Reliance Telecom), Rs 89 lakh on Tata Teleservices, Rs 84 lakh Vodafone, Rs 40 lakh on Bharti Airtel, Rs 13.5 lakh on Telenor, Rs 3 lakh on Sistema and Rs 1.5 lakh on MTNL for failing to meet 2G service quality parameters.

Apart from Aircel, Trai has imposed Rs 70 lakh penalty on BSNL and Rs 2.5 lakh on Vodafone for breaching 3G service quality benchmark.

Sinha said that Trai monitors the performance of service providers through quarterly performance monitoring reports and publishes the same on its website.

"From analysis of the quarterly performance monitoring reports of September 2015, December 2015, March 2016 and June 2016 available on Trai website, it has been noticed that there has been consistent improvement in the performance of service providers in meeting the benchmark for call drop parameters," Sinha said.

He said that telecom operators have reported that they have already installed more than 1,60,000 additional BTSs (Base Transceiver Stations) across the country during the six and half month period from June 15, 2016 to December 31, 2016 and further plan to install about 1.1 lakh additional BTSs across the country up to March 31, 2017.