<p>This paper presents a delay and a data-drop compensator to address the variable latencies which arise in a wide area damping controller (WADC). The vulnerability of data-driven control (DDC) based WADC to these latencies is specifically highlighted. The uniqueness of the proposed delay compensator is that it is designed to address not only the large deviations in delay mean value but also the variations around the mean value. This is achieved by reformulating the delay in terms of its mean value and distribution around the mean value. Further, a new approach is followed for data-drop compensation, in which the nonlinearity in power systems is considered. The proposed data-drop compensation uses the technique of dynamic linearization (DL) and pseudo partial derivative (PPD). Rigorous analysis has been carried out to observe the effect of variable delay and data-drop on the damping performance of DDCWADC. It is shown that the damping performance of DDCWADC improves when the proposed compensation techniques are used. Further, the proposed delay compensator and the nonlinear system based data-drop compensator achieves improved compensation than the customary ones.</p>