Supreme Court strikes down TRAI's call-drop mandate
COAI, a body of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India and 21 telecom operators, including Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Reliance, had approached the country's highest court when the Delhi High Court upheld TRAI's decision to penalise the telcos from January 2016.
The telcos informed the Supreme Court (SC) that the sector is facing a huge debt burden and paying a high price for spectrum. The 'call drop penalty is an added burden.
They also refuted TRAI's claim that they are not investing in infrastructure and said that in the past 15 months they have installed two lakh towers, media reported.
SC called the Trai order "arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent," according to reports.
In October last year, Trai had said that starting January 1 operators would be required to give one rupee for every call drop to the user, with a maximum of three per day.
In April, when the telcos had approached the apex court, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi supported TRAI's decision and said that four to five service providers are running a cartel of billion subscribers, media had reported.
Kapil Sibal, who was representing the telcos, called the Wednesday judgement a 'historic' one, media reported.
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