With its ruling that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regulation on call drops is arbitrary and unreasonable and non-transparent, the Supreme Court of India on Wednesday struck down the Commission’s regulation which made it mandatory for telecom companies to compensate subscribers for call drops. We have held the impugned regulation to be ultra vires, arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent, a bench headed by Justice Kurian Joseph commented while sweeping aside the TRAI order.
The detailed judgment of the case is yet to be made public. Last year in October, TRAI, had asked the telecom firms, in a notification, to compensate each consumer with INR 1 for each call drop which was further subjected to subject to a maximum of three disrupted calls in a day beginning from January this year. However, On March 1, the Delhi High Court has upheld the same against which the Cellular Operators’ Association of India, which is a body of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India and a cartel of 21 telecom operators, including big names like Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Reliance, approached the Supreme Court.
The telecom companies had then argued that the entire sector is reeling under a huge debt and they have to pay a big price for spectrum, therefore zero tolerance on call drops should not be forcefully imposed on them. The telecom service providers, while Refuting the allegations of TRAI that they are taking huge gains in the sector, said that they have been investing hugely on the infrastructure as well. TRAI had then told the court that its regulation was to protect the interest of consumers as these service providers are not willing to compensate them, who in the end face a loss of their hard earned money, which isn’t reimbursed by the telecom operators.
