Indian parliamentary panel proposes to put call drops under consumer laws

An Indian parliamentary panel has proposed that call drops be brought under the purview of the country's consumer laws to enable aggrieved users to take telecom service providers to consumer court for poor service, officials said Wednesday.

Call drops, the sudden interruption of phone calls that leaves mobile users babbling for seconds before realizing the disconnection, are very common in India.

"If the parliamentary panel's recommendations are accepted, it will be a big boost for mobile phone users. Under the existing law, cases related to call drops are monitored by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)," a senior official said, on condition of anonymity.

Indian Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha has said though call drops have fallen drastically in recent months, his ministry will seriously "look into the recommendations".

The reccomendations of the parliamentary panel came nearly a year after India's Supreme Court ruled that mobile users can't claim compensation from cell phone operators for call drops.

TRAI, in October 2015, ordered that customers will have to be compensated by telecom operators for call drops and that customers should get one Indian rupee per dropped call up to a maximum of three rupees a day.

The telecom operators had approached the apex court saying TRAI's order was unfair because connectivity is affected by factors beyond their control. Endit