Shares of Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular fell nearly 3 per cent on Friday after telecom regulator TRAI recommended compensation to consumers for dropped calls.
A call drop means a voice call which, after being successfully established, is interrupted before it is completed.
TRAI or Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has said that mobile operators will have to credit Re 1 to a user's account for a call drop from January 1, 2016. It said users would be compensated for no more than three dropped calls a day.
The regular said that service providers would have to send SMSes to customers on the amount credited within four hours of a call drop. Postpaid customers would see the credit reflected in their next bill. Operators are expected to oppose the move for compensation on call drops.
The move to penalise operators for call drops will be an additional burden for telecom operators who are struggling under high debt loads after bidding for spectrum.
Analysts say average voice realization for operators is around Rs.s.0.35 per minute. In other words, they would be bearing a loss of around Re 0.65 for each call drop. The maximum hit per customer per day for operators works out to around Rs.s. 2 for three dropped calls.
Sanjay Kapoor, former CEO of Bharti Airtel, said that for telecom operators the hit would be much higher than the Re 1 penalty recommended by the regulator.
If the costs for putting in "systems for calculating and compensating for call drops and intervention of call centres for physical exchange of communication with aggrieved parties" are included, it could be "10 times higher than Re 1 penalty", he said.
Bharti Airtel shares were also impacted after it said that the agreements for sale of tower assets in Africa between Bharti Airtel Malawi Holdings and Eaton Towers have lapsed and therefore stand terminated.
Bharti Airtel shares were trading 1.5 per cent lower in late trade while Idea Cellular was down 2.5 per cent. In comparison, the Nifty was trading 0.45 per cent higher.
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