The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will come out with its recommendations on compensation to mobile users for call drops by October 15. It will also bring out a paper in the next few days, which will list out the reasons for call drops along with data.

"We will come out with recommendations on compensation to consumers for call drops by October 15. The stakeholders can file their written submission on the issue deliberated on Thursday by Monday," Trai chief R S Sharma said during an open-house discussion with the stakeholders.

It conducted a drive test on September 28-29 in Delhi and Mumbai and five other cities, including Ahmedabad and Pune. The results will be out in a few days.

It is also considering making it mandatory for telecom operators to disclose their network capacities periodically, as the regulator feels that the call-drop problem needs to be examined in its entirety.

Telecom service providers have opposed any compensation for call drops in their filings to Trai. During the discussion, Bharti Airtel said, according to licence conditions, operators were required to provide details of street-level coverage and not inside buildings.

Other operators also said the cost for setting up mechanism to ascertain reasons for call drops and subsequent compensations would be high.

On Wednesday, minister for communications and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said the call-drops situation has improved of late and the government expected the issue to be resolved by October-end. “We have been taking active steps to improve the call-drop situation and we expect the issue to be resolved by the end of the next month," he said.

He also said the compensation for call drops would be considered after recommendations of the telecom regulator. Compensation for consumers is not a bad idea, the minister added.

According to available data from April to the first week of September, the total number of bad cells was more than 34,460. About 16,962 cells have been improved, while 17,498 are yet to be improved. The total number of cells that were under watch was 1,825,259.