Telecom operators will have to pay hefty penalties for call drops. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on August 18 issued guidelines with a penalty of up to Rs10 lakh on companies in case they fail to meet the revised benchmark for three consecutive quarters. "We have proposed a financial disincentive in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. It is a graded penalty system, depending on the performance of a network," R. S Sharma, Chairman, TRAI, said at a presser. Further, if an operator fails to meet the call drop benchmark in consecutive quarters, the penalty amount will be increased 1.5 times and in the third consecutive month it will be doubled. "There is cap of Rs10 lakh on the financial disincentive," said Secretary (Acting), TRAI, SK Gupta. According to the amendments to the Quality of Service (QoS) regulations, the methodology for assessment of drop call rate (DCR) will be on a percentile basis instead of the existing methodology of the average of call drop of all towers. Granular measurement Under the QoS rule, the penalty on call drops was Rs 50,000 per violation. After the revision, TRAI has made measurement of the call drop rate more granular from the circle level to mobile towers in a circle. "There have been some issues in measurement of call drops. Averages hide a lot of things. Under the new rules, we are taking into account temporary issues that may be there in the network as well as geographical spread of the network," said Sharma.