Telecom companies reject Trai plan to compute call drop rates

KOLKATA: Mobile phone companies cutting across GSM and CDMA technology platforms have rejected the telecom regulator’s suggestion of computing call drop rates through a meta data analysis of call detail records (CDRs), asserting that the latter is designed purely for billing purpose and not measuring quality of service. Any analysis of CDRs, they said, would present a flawed picture as abnormal call terminations/disconnects can be triggered by handsets getting switched off inadvertently, battery draining out or a customer moving to an underground metro station or a building.
Accordingly, telecom companies have urged the sector regulator to continue with current practice of using network statistics to calculate call drop rates. “Call drop rate cannot be calculated from CDR meta as the same hasn’t been devised for the purpose,” said the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in its submission to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

The COAI represents India’s biggest phone companies such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and newest operator Reliance Jio Infocomm amongst others.

The GSM industry body’s views have been backed by the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (Auspi), representing dual-tech firms such as Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices and pure CDMA players like Sistema Shyam Teleservices.“ The purpose of CDRs is for billing only, and they also do not offer separate cause codes (read: reasons) for all types of drops,” the Auspi said in its submission to Trai, a copy of which was reviewed by ET.

Mobile phone companies were responding to the sector regulator’s discussion paper floated in August on reviewing quality of network-related services, which has rekindled the debate on penalties for call drops. The Trai had sought industry feedback on the appropriateness of computing call drop rates through meta data analysis of CDRs.

Telcos have also suggested that call drop rates be calculated at the “service area” and not “base station level” as the former parameter is a true representative of a fully-loaded mobile network’s performance when there is maximum traffic. Both COAI and Auspi have also dismissed Trai’s suggestions of creating a customer satisfaction index for improving user experience or the need for graded financial disincentives.

Brushing aside the rationale of a customer satisfaction index, the COAI said a customer is in no position to differentiate between any problems arising due to glitches in a terminating network or the one serving him. “Hence any calculations would be subjective and the indices suggested by Trai cannot be used to decisively conclude on quality of services of telecom operators,” said the industry body in its submissions.