Call drops: COAI urges House panel to hear its views

NEW DELHI: The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has written to a parliamentary panel looking into call drops and quality of service, suggesting that individual telcos such as Airtel and Vodafone be also called for a meeting to discuss the issue on Thursday. The standing committee on information technology had called COAI — which represents GSM telcos including Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India and Reliance Jio Infocomm — and Jio along with telecom department (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the meeting, but did not invite other individual telcos.

“We respectfully suggest that in order to assist the Hon-’ble committee in this important exercise, the other members of COAI namely, Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, Aircel and Telenor and the members of AUSPI be also called to depose before the committee and furnish all relevant information and data for the consideration of the committee,” Rajan Mathews, director general of COAI, wrote to Anurag Thakur, chairman of the panel, in a letter dated November 7.

AUSPI represents dual technology operators such as Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices. COAI said many of the issues related to the subject in question would be best explained by individual telcos who are also licensees as these issues lie within the ambit of bilateral commercial agreements between members.


“Additionally, networks and technologies vary among members and they are best situated to explain some of the nuances involved,” COAI said.