Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has imposed a penalty of 56 lakhs on Indian telecom operators for not meeting call drop benchmark in the first half of 2018.
Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha shared the data in the Rajya Sabha, stating that TRAI has imposed the highest penalty of 22 lakh on Tata Teleservices in 2018, which is a process to merge with Bharti Airtel, reports PTI.
The regulator has also found Idea Cellular and BSNL for not meeting call drop norms during January-March and April-June quarter. TRAI has thus imposed a penalty of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 13 lakh on Idea Cellular in both the quarters of 2018.
It has also imposed a penalty of Rs 2 lakh and Rs 4 lakh on BSNL during Q1 and Q2 of 2018, respectively. The regulator has also imposed a penalty on Telenor, which is now a part of Airtel, of Rs 6 lakh for meeting call drops benchmark.
“As a result of continuous efforts, significant improvement has been observed in terms of telecom service providers’ compliance to TRAI quality of services benchmarks on the call-drop rate in spite of a rapid increase in traffic volume and more stringent TRAI benchmarks effective from October 1, 2017,” Manoj Sinha said.