Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha to hold his first meeting with telecos CEOs today

After taking oath as Telecom Minister earlier this month, Manoj Sinha will hold his first meeting with the CEOs of telecom companies today to discuss call drops issue.

Sinha is expected to discuss the upcoming spectrum auction including issues raised by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

Possible issues for discussion:

Spectrum auction

Telecom department is gearing up for the launch of mega spectrum auction worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore. The government expects to raise at least Rs 64,000 crore from the auction of about 2,300 Mhz of spectrum and Rs 98,995 crore from various levies and services in the telecom sector, a PTI report said.

As per the source, spectrum auction may be the highlight of the discussion.

Call Drops

Along with this the on-going call drop issue raised by TRAI will be matter of concern for the telecom companies as the CEOs may have to answer Telecom Minister.

In the past two months, Trai conducted independent test drive in 12 cities and the results were reported. As per the results, most of the telecom companies failed to meet the call drop rate of under 2% in major cities.

Like ZeeBiz had earlier reported, in June, Trai had also accused telecom companies like Aircel, Vodafone and Idea for using call drop masking technology to cheat call drop tests. With this technology, a call remains connected even if a consumer moves to poor network coverage area for which he is billed.

Later, after the test drive results were disclosed, Telecom Secretary JS Deepak had asked telecom companies for 100 days plan on call drops issue and assured that the industry will make investment in their network. 

With this, the telecom industry agreed to make an investment of Rs 12000 crore on network and set up of towers in the residential areas in Delhi.

CAG audit

The trouble for telecom companies grew last week after DoT issued the first batch of demand notices to Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communication, Aircel, Tata Telecom on the basis of Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) report. 

The department is likely to send the notices to these telecom companies to tune of Rs 12,000 crore for under-reporting revenue by about Rs 45000 crore during the audit.