Govt: Call drop instances down, TRAI imposed financial disincentive on service providers

New Delhi: Instances of call drop and improper telecom network coverage have gone down and the TRAI has imposed financial disincentive of Rs 3.29 crore on service providers, the government informed Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Replying to supplementary queries during Question Hour, Minister of State for Telecom Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre said there has been a lot of improvement in call drops in the last three-four years and TRAI has introduced parameters for disincentive to telecom companies and a fine of over Rs 2.5 crore has been recovered from them.

He said the government has also introduced Interactive voice response system from 3.5 crore subscribers on call drops and feedback received from them, of which only 1.21 lakh call drop problems have been found.

Dhotre also said that as part of the revival plan of BSNL, 4G services will be introduced from April onwards and preparations are on in this regard.

The minister also denied any interception of phone call by the agencies.

"We should have faith in each other and there are no cases of snooping or phone tapping. We all get together to help improve the services," he told the members.

In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said TRAI has also introduced a revised graded Financial Disincentives (FD) structure for DCR parameters Effective from 1st October 2017, based on the extent to which a TSP's (telecom service provider) performance deviates from the specified DCR (drop call rates) benchmark.