New Trai chief's clear signal on call drops

Ram Sewak Sharma, new chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), said on Monday the issue of call drops would be dealt with on priority. The process for recommendations on net neutrality, digitisation in the broadcasting sector, and fixing of spectrum price would also be expedited, Sharma added.

“We will introduce new technologies to determine the root cause of various problems. Call drop, for example, is something we can analyse with the help of technology and suggest possible solutions,” Sharma said on Monday upon assuming charge as chairman.

“Priority is also to ensure transparent and fair play in the sector. There are multiple stakeholders in the telecom sector and they will not have their interest aligned. I will see that we are able to regulate effectively,” he said.

Call drops happen because of various issues — less number of tower sites, lack of spectrum and radiation fears owing to which many residential welfare associations (RWAs) do not allow tower sites to be installed. The department of telecommunications (DoT) has also asked Trai to work out an incentive/disincentive mechanism on call drops. Uninor is the only operator which compensates its users. For every call drop, Uninor subscribers get one minute credited to their account.



The DoT has called a meeting of mobile phone operators this Thursday on the issue of call drops.

Sharma, who took voluntary retirement from his post as secretary, department of electronics and information technology this month, is known for his role in the government’s ambitious project Aadhaar, where he worked closely with Nandan Nilekani, the former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Sharma also played an important role in the prime minister’s Digital India initiative.



A 1978-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Jharkhand cadre, Sharma holds a master’s degree in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) and a master’s in computer science from the University of California, Riverside. Sharma’s predecessor Rahul Khullar had retired as Trai chairman on May 14 this year.

The issue of net-neutrality has created a debate between telecom players and over-the-top (OTT) players over regulation issues. Trai had started a consultation process for regulation of OTT during the time of Khullar, where the regulator received one million comments. However, Khullar retired before recommendations were made on the issue.