Bharti Airtel to put a cap on permissible call drops voluntarily

KOLKATA: Bharti Airtel has decided to voluntarily set a maximum permissible call drop limit for itself, which is more stringent than the cap prescribed by the telecom regulator.

Experts described Airtel’s step as a smart branding move in the face of Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment striking down the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s ( Trai) order for call drop compensation.

Telco allowed itself a maximum drop of 1.5% of all calls made on its network, compared with the present 2% limit prescribed by Trai. Additionally, Airtel is setting aside a corpus, capped at Rs 100 crore annually, to be derived from penalising itself on exceeding its new benchmark, for educating underprivileged children in rural areas, Airtel said in a statement Thursday.

The telco will contribute Rs 1 lakh for every 0.01% increase in call drop rate beyond 1.5% every month in each circle of operation.