Telecom stocks such as Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel witnessed selling pressure today, falling as much as 3.3 per cent, after TRAI raised the penalty on operators to up to Rs 2 lakh for call drops on mobiles and poor quality of service.
Shares of Idea Cellular declined by 3.24 per cent to Rs 147.65, while Bharti Airtel was down 2.98 per cent to Rs 340.95 on BSE.
The penalty amount would be as high as Rs 2 lakh if the operators are unable to meet the benchmark set for the quality of service in two or more subsequent quarters, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had said yesterday.
The penalty will kick-in if call drops in a quarter average more than 2 per cent of the total traffic in a telecom circle.
As per the rules, call drop, availability of mobile towers, time taken for a call to connect, network congestion, voice quality and network related issues feature in the TRAI’s service quality parameters.
The telecom regulator also said there is no significant improvement in the call drop issue in Mumbai and Delhi as operators are lagging on various fronts in meeting the standards.
At a time when telcos and government are claiming that the call drop issue is improving, the regulator has said that in Mumbai, no operator is meeting the benchmark, while in Delhi three top players Airtel, Vodafone and Aircel are found to be lagging in offering good quality services.
TRAI is likely to soon come out with recommendations on compensating consumers for call drops.