Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned telcos on Thursday saying that if they do not address concerns raised by consumers on call drops and quality of service, the matter would be referred to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for action.

Warning private telecom operators on quality of service, Prasad said, “As a minister, I am equally accountable to consumers. If the consumers of India are complaining, there are lot of call drops in case of private operators, they must take this as caveat consideration.” If consumers continue to raise concerns, the matter would be brought to Trai’s notice.

Prasad said that he is answerable for the quality of service (QoS) delivered by state-run telecom firms, but at the same time accused the previous United Progressive Alliance government of hurting financial condition of BSNL and MTNL. “This issue has always baffled me. BSNL was in Rs 10,000-crore profit in 2004 when Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee left the office,” he added.

On apprehensions that call rates would increase due to the revenue outgo of telcos in the spectrum auction, Prasad said that there will be negligible impact of 1.3 paise per minute on call rates. “A very good expert whom I respect shared with me that Indian consumers make mobile calls worth 350 minutes. The spectrum price paid by companies is for 20 years. If you divide that by 20 years, the yearly impact come to about Rs 5,300 crore on industry whose annual revenue is Rs 2 lakh crore plus.”

Prasad said that further dividing Rs 5,300 crore by average minutes of call made by the consumer, the impact comes to around 1.3 paise.

Source: Business Today