Trai fixes mobile call ring time at 30 seconds

The call ring time of landline has been set at 60 seconds

The telecom regulator on Friday ruled that an incoming voice call on the mobile phone must ring for at least 30 seconds and landline phones must ring for minimum 60 seconds in case the call is neither answered nor rejected by the subscriber.

The order will address the issue raised by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, where two telecom operators engaged in the blame game over the matter.

"The time duration of alert for an incoming voice call, which is neither answered nor rejected by the called party, shall be thirty seconds for Cellular Mobile Telephone Service and sixty seconds for Basic Telephone Service," TRAI said in an amendment to quality of service norms for basic telephone service and cellular mobile telephone service.

"However, the originating network may release an unanswered call after ninety seconds in case the call release message is not received from the terminating network," the TRAI said.

Till now there was no such limit for calls within India.

When TRAI floated paper to resolve the issue earlier, Airtel had said ringing time to be set at 45 seconds while Jio suggested for reduction to 20 to 25 seconds and Vodafone-Idea wanted it should be 30 seconds.

The shorter ringing time by a call originating network to rival network means, the call receiver has to call back. By doing so, the call originating network get more incoming call as a result the company earns money in terms of interconnect usage charge or IUC. The IUC is levied by mobile networks handling incoming calls from rival networks. At present, the IUC is at 6 paise a minute and Jio demanding complete scrapping of it.

With telecom operators on their own were reducing incoming call ring time to attract reverse call from the subscriber of other networks, the TRAI stepped in to address the issue.