The Supreme Court may have trashed the regulation on compensating mobile users for call drops but telecom operators are set to introduce new initiatives to offer better quality of services as a competitive edge. While Airtel, on Thursday, announced its plan to self-regulate call drops, other operators, including Vodafone, are lining up their respective initiatives.

“Network quality is the next big battle in telecom and things like call drop can be huge a dampener. The operator which can offer congestion-free services that allow users to talk and browse internet seamlessly will be the winner in this phase,” said a Mumbai-based telecom operator.

Airtel betters benchmark Under the TRAI’s quality of service norms, operators have to ensure that 98 per cent of all calls are completed without any drop. Airtel has bettered this benchmark to 98.5 per cent. It would impose on itself a penalty for dropped calls beyond the 1.5 per cent margin of error, subject to a maximum of ₹100 crore per annum. The money will be contributed by Airtel towards the education of underprivileged children in villages. 

Gopal Vittal, Managing Director & CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said, “This self-regulation on Quality of Service further underlines our commitment to our customers despite the challenges of limited spectrum availability and acquisition of sites in urban areas.” Airtel has decided to apply this standard benchmark across the country despite the constraint of difficult operating conditions in hilly regions such as Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the North East.

According to industry insiders, other operators are set to follow. Reliance Jio, for instance, is gearing up to offer high-definition calling from day one.

HD calling, until now, was available only over Net-based apps like Skype.

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