The high court order had come as it dismissed the plea of telecom operators for a stay on TRAI’s compensation policy, announced on October 16, 2015, for call drops under which a rupee will be credited to the mobile users’ account for every call drop (restricted to three per day) starting January 1, 2016.
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The two organisations has challenged the Delhi High Court’s order upholding the TRAI decision to penalise the telcos for call drops.
COAI, in a statement, said it requested the apex court “to consider its prayer that the TRAI Regulation on Call Drops is ultra vires the TRAI Act in that the act does not give TRAI adjudicatory powers and hence TRAI can not grant compensation”.
The Supreme Court today refused to offer any interim relief to telecom companies in their plea against the call drop penalty that has been imposed on them by regulator TRAI.
The Supreme Court bench told lawyers for the phone companies that they should ask Trai to defer the March 7 meeting until the court hears the matter on Thursday, said Ashok Sud, secretary-general, Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, which represents pure CDMA player Sistema Shyam and dual-tech operators such as Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices.
Incidentally, Kapil Sibal was the former telecom and IT minister when the Congress-led UPA government was at the center. “If call drop fault is on your (telecos) part, you will have to pay for it”. Sibal said Trai should be restrained from taking any coercive steps to recover dues from telecom companies until the next hearing.
However, the telecom companies said that the matter should be heard. Last year, they had claimed that TRAI’s solution for call drops Re 1 /call drop will bleed them by Rs 54,000 crore, and they had even threatened to increase mobile tariffs.
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Telcos had opposed the notification as a knee-jerk reaction and termed it “arbitrary and without application of mind”, while holding that there were various reasons for call drops beyond the control of telecom service providers and that it was impossible to find the exact reason for each call drop.
