Deliberating multiple options on call drop issue: RS Sharma, Trai Chairman

In an exclusive interview with ET Now, Trai Chairman RS Sharma spoke candidly on various issues including the recent Supreme Court verdict on call drop issue.

ET Now: But if you look at the Supreme Court judgement, the comments unreasonable, ultra vires, arbitrary, not transparent – at some level, do you think maybe the order should have been thought through better by the TRAI and maybe it overstepped its mandate so to say?

RS Sharma: Well as I said, I will not really make any comment neither on the honourable Supreme Court judgement, not even on the issue as to where we went wrong because that is something which we are going to analyse. Let us put it this way that as it appears, we had right thoughts in mind which is basically the consumer’s interest.

ET Now: It is well intentional but maybe..

RS Sharma: But maybe we faltered along the way in the sense that we did not really take the appropriate kind of legally correct steps. But we have to think through that.

ET Now: Do you think the fact that the Supreme Court said that it should be a legislative route – does that give the government some sort of an elbow room to address service quality?

RS Sharma: Well as I said, I will not really like to kind of make any comments on that direction. We are still sort of deliberating as to what could be the potential steps to kind of deal with this issue. So let us not sort of prejudge as to what is appropriate, what we are going to do. The only thing which I can say is that as consumer protection or consumer’s interest are one of the mandates of TRAI and therefore we will certainly continue to work in that direction.

ET Now: Would it logical, TRAI addressing some of the issues or would it logically be the government amending the TRAI act or looking at some legislative route, just for an understanding point of view.

RS Sharma: There could be number of sort of approaches to this and it is not only one approach, it could be a combination of approaches. So as I said, we are examining this issue as to whether any legislative changes will be required in the act or whether under the existing provisions of the act, we should be able to discharge the functions of the consumer protection.

ET Now: If you take an example, Airtel went ahead and reduced the call drop rate voluntarily from 2% to 1.5%. Is that the way forward, maybe leaving it to the industry?

RS Sharma: No I am very happy. I mean there is no question. In fact, I am one of those persons who believe in minimal regulation, so there is no question of, this was a step which became necessary in view of the very-very serious problem of call drop. So if automatically it improves, we will be very happy and the industry, I would urge the industry that they should really take steps to ensure the reduction in call drop. Let me also flag one more issue that the percentages are an average overall percentages.

ET Now: They sort of loose the whole picture as far as

RS Sharma: So essentially, these percentages, do not take into account the fact that there could be variations in specific areas because of whatever reasons. So I think we will have ensure and the service provider will have to ensure that such variations do not really cross a particular limit which becomes difficult for a particular area or a particular geography to have very serious issues of quality of service.

ET Now: You rightly pointed out it gets lost in averages because at the end of the day averages do not reveal the true picture. Is there any other way of figuring out data?

RS Sharma: We will think about it. We are thinking about it and we will take appropriate steps at appropriate time.

ET Now: Is spectrum or lack of spectrum really one of the biggest bottlenecks that the industry faces?

RS Sharma: Well you see as I said service is composed of a number of service is like a dish. A dish is made of a number of ingredients and there are these recipes which. So there a number of ingredients which basically build up or which make this entire service. So spectrum is certainly one of the ingredients and of course the network, the way you configure it is another ingredient, the maintenance of the network is another very important part.

So there are a whole range of issues or whole range of things which are required to deliver that service. Spectrum is certainly one of them and it is not as if these are not fungible in the sense that the lack of spectrum or a deficit of that spectrum could be made up by having a more dense network, I mean, more of number of towers and other kinds of things.

So what I am saying is that yes, it is certainly-- more the spectrum the more you have, certainly it will be very good and we have maintained that all along. TRAI has an institution has maintained all along that we need to put as much spectrum as possible for commercial usage of the telecom infrastructure and recently also you must have seen in our recommendation which we have given.

ET Now: You did make a pitch for all spectrum.

RS Sharma: We have said that the entire spectrum band must be auctioned and other spectrum also which is left out that also should be auctioned.

ET Now: There was also an impression that was there that you know maybe in terms of quantum of the penalty or even deciding how is the consumer not at fault in terms of the call drop and in fact the Supreme Court also said that it was an unjustifiably windfall to consumers, at some level that was not thought through, the quantum and the rationale?

RS Sharma: Well, as I said, I will not really make any commentary on that either the judgment or whatever steps we took. We suffice to say that we are deliberating these issues internally as to what were the deficiencies in the order which we issued and whether there could be other methods of achieving the same objective and of course as you said, industry itself coming forward and saying that we will reduce, wonderful.

So ultimately what is our objective, our objective is to provide world class service to the telecom consumers of our country. That is what we want. We also want the industry must grow and it has grown, it has been very vibrant. So both things will have to be kind of balanced.

ET Now: How soon can we see any movement on this front?

RS Sharma: Well, I cannot give you a timeline. As I said we will come on that issue at an appropriate time.