Trai penalises Jio, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone
02 Jul 2018
Trai has imposed penalties on leading operators, including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, for failing to meet various Quality of Service benchmarks in the December quarter, PTI reported citing a source.
Aggressive new entrant Jio faced the highest penalty — Rs 31 lakh for failure to meet trai's service quality standards in the December quarter including Point of Interconnect congestion, termination or closure of service complied to within the stipulated seven days, and accessibility of call centres and customer care. The fine imposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) relates to multiple circles or service areas in which the company operates.
Idea Cellular followed with penalties of t Rs28-Rs29 lakh for the December quarter call drops, metering and billing, both pre-paid and post-paid, accessibility of call centre or customer care and its response time to a customers for assistance, in various circles.
Market leader Bharti Airtel will pay Rs23 lakh for the non-compliance on standards on metering and billing, accessibility of call centres and stipulated response time on operators answering calls for specific circles during the quarter.
Vodafone faced the least penalties of Rs9 lakh for non-compliance time-bound refund of deposits after closure, response time for calls answered by operators, and call drops.
Under new rules, call drops are measured at mobile tower level instead of telecom circle level. Trai was of the view that average calculated at circle level may hide many issues (See: Telecom regulator to penalise operators for call drops).