The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday said its recommendations to compensate customers for call drops will be ready by mid-October.

“We will come out with recommendations on compensation to the consumers for call drops by October 15,” said TRAI chairman R.S.Sharma after an open house discussion on the issue with telecom network operators and consumer groups here.

He also said the telecom watchdog will release a service paper within a few days listing reasons behind call drops.

TRAI will also publish shortly the results of the tests conducted by it on September 28-29 in Delhi and Mumbai, two key cities for telecom operators.

The telecom ministry headed by Ravishankar Prasad, has been taking measures to address the issue of call drops since April. Recently, telecom secretary held a meeting of all telecom operators and directed them to improve mobile services. Telecom ministry on Wednesday asked telecom service providers to install new mobile towers to deal with the problem of call drops and improve quality of service (QoS).

Communications Minister Prasad has already written to chief ministers to permit installation of telecom towers on state government buildings also, as has been done by the Kerala government.

Earlier, the central government conducted a special audit of cell phone towers and said that of the 34,600 such towers operating poorly, about 16,962 had improved their performance while the rest were in the process of doing so. The service quality of all operators was being monitored on a week to 10 day basis, said the telecom department.

COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India) earlier said the call drop issue is not related to their investment in telecom infrastructure. COAI urged telecom department to ensure that the industry does not face troubles in setting up towers across the country.

IANS