Sinha to meet CEOs of telcos on call drop issue on Nov 1

Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha will meet CEOs of telecom companies on November 1 to review call drop situation, an issue that has been troubling mobile phone users for a long time.
"The Minister will meet CEOs of companies on the call drop issue...We have held one meeting already and this (upcoming) meeting will be for stocktaking and (preparing) a roadmap for the future," Telecom Secretary J S Deepak told reporters here.
In June this year, at the height of consumer discontent over issues of poor service quality and call drops, the telecom secretary had a similar review meeting with CEOs of mobile service providers.

After the meeting, the mobile operators -- most of which were frequently failing in quarterly sample call drop tests conducted by Trai at that point -- committed to invest about Rs 12,000 crore to install about 60,000 towers to check call drops.
Each operator had presented a 100-day plan for improving service quality and also raised issues hampering improvement in the networks.
"We will review the plan," Deepak said.

In fact, to check the call drop menace, Trai had earlier directed operators to compensate their subscribers for dropped calls. The order, however, quashed by the Supreme Court.
Deepak today said that according to TRAI, there has been an improvement in the call drop situation now.

As such, TRAI has been taking a slew of measures to increase mobile operators' accountability over issue of call drops, and in August this year it proposed stricter quality norms for local areas and imposing financial disincentives for poor services.
The regulator had also sought public opinion on setting up of an ombudsman in the sector, for speedy resolution of rising subscriber complaints over issues such as wrong billing and poor service quality.