Call Drops Will Continue To Plague Telecom Industry: TRAI

The concept of offering free calls was started by Reliance Jio and slowly other operators have joined the wagon. But, the situation has been changed, and Reliance Jio is now charging 6 paise per minute for outgoing to other networks (Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, BSNL, and MTNL).

Both Airtel and Vodafone-Idea are still offering plans with unlimited calls. The telcos have recently revised plans where they announced free unlimited calls to all networks. This seems a good move to attract Jio users. On the other hand, a report by the news agency PTI claims that telcos are blaming free voice calls for the poor network.

However, it seems that TRAI is not happy with the statement and said that the call drops will remain the main issue. "Most of the telcos are offering voice free, their argument is that if something is free, how much can you (TRAI) punish me because I am not getting anything for that, which may not be correct because they are essentially cross-subsidizing," TRAI Chairman R S Sharma said.

Sharma intimated that the issue of call drops is here, but it seems that it will improve in the coming days. It is worth mentioning that TRAI also conducts a test on all busy roads to find out the call drop situation.

Airtel And Vodafone Unlimited Plans

Airtel has recently removed a cap on its prepaid plans. The telco has announced new plans with two days, 28 days, 84 days, and 365 days validity. The company has launched three plans that start from Rs. 219 and go up to Rs. 499.

The first plan of Rs. 299 is offering 1GB data per day for 28 days and unlimited calls to all networks. Whereas Rs. 399 and Rs. 449 are offering 1.5GB data per day and 2GB data for 56 days. Vodafone- Idea has also launched two unlimited plans recently.