Call drop compensation proposal by mid-October: TRAI

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday reiterated that it will come out with recommendations to compensate customers for call drops by mid-October.

"We will come out with recommendations on compensation to the consumers for call drops by October 15," said TRAI chairman R.S.Sharma after an open house discussion on the issue with service providers and consumer groups here.

He also said the watchdog will release a service paper within a few days listing reasons behind call drops.

TRAI will also publish shortly the results of the tests conducted by it on September 28-29 in Delhi and Mumbai.

The government, which has been taking proactive measures to address the issue of call drops since April with the telecom secretary holding a meeting of all operators and directing them to improve services, on Wednesday asked service providers to install new towers to deal with the problem of call drops and improve quality of service.

Communications Minister Prasad has already written to chief ministers to permit installation of telecom towers on state government buildings also, as has been done by the Kerala government.

Earlier, the central government conducted a special audit of cell phone towers and said that of the 34,600 such towers operating poorly, about 16,962 had improved their performance while the rest were in the process of doing so. The service quality of all operators was being monitored on a week to 10 day basis, said the telecom department.