A bench of chief justice G Rohini and justice Jayant Nath of the Delhi High Court on Monday supported the decision of TRAI that the cellular operators will have to compensate the subscribers for call drops from 1st January 2016.
The Cellular Operator Assosiation of India (COAI), which includes telecom giants like Reliance, Vodafone and Airtel, is a unified body of telecom service providers with 21 such members, had filed a petition in the high court seeking to quash the TRAI’s regulation, stating that the decision was penalizing them without proving any wrong doing.
The companies also claimed that, with such a decision TRAI was interfering with their company’s tariff structure, which could be only done through an order and not a regulation.
The court though showed full support to the earlier decision and dismissed the COAI’s petition and said that it was under the power of TRAI to form regulation under section 36 of the Act and that the decision was in the interest of the consumers. It also stated in its verdict that the company will only have to pay the calling consumer and not the receiver.
