SC asks telcos to assure call drops don't exceed 2% limit

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked telecom operators to give an assurance that they had not exceeded the two per cent threshold limit of call drops as mandated in the regulations.

A bench headed by Kurian Joseph also asked the cellular operator associations to inform the court whether any penalty was ever levied on them for call drops. The bench also had Rohinton F Nariman said.

Telcos said mobile phones bought in the grey market were largely responsible for call drops.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for cellular operators, said there cannot be a perfect world in the world of radio waves and call drops will happen as they have no technology to control it.

"There are conditions which are beyond our control like storm, humidity, set-up boxes, phones available in grey markets and many other things. We do not have technologies to prevent it," Sibal said.

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, and 21 telecom operators, including Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, have challenged the Delhi High Court order upholding Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India)'s decision making it mandatory for them to compensate subscribers for call drops from January 1, 2016.

Sibal said telecom operators have never crossed the two per cent limit of call drops as mandated in the regulations and in their licence conditions but now the Trai wants us to pay for every call drop.

If the Trai's recomendation is implemented, the telecom operators will end up paying around Rs 50,000 crore to the consumers in a year. "If this recomendation is implemented, then this will finish the entire telecom sector in one year as call drops can't be controlled and no country in the world has zero percentage of call drops," he said.

In October last year, Trai had come out with the regulation which was to come into effect from January 1, mandating operators to give one rupee for every call drop to the user, with a maximum of three per day. Telcos had challenged this in the Delhi High Court which dismissed their petition.

Operators then went to the Supreme Court which did not give any interim relief and fixed the hearing for today.

The arguments wereinconclusive on Thursday. The AttorneyGeneral who defended the TRAI order is yet to reply to the telco's arguments. The hearing will continue on Tuesday.