Cos told to upgrade network, order special audit on service; shrugs off fears on health risk from mobile towers
Inundated with complaints on rising rate of call drops, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday talked tough with telecom companies (telcos) and announced a slew of measures the government would take to rein in the menace.
These included directing telecom service providers (TSPs) to optimise radio frequency network, a special audit of service quality by department of telecom (DoT), enabling in-building solution (IBS), modification of building by-laws to include a provision for telecom infrastructure and exploding myths on health hazards of radiation from mobiles towers.
While doing so, he urged the telcos to shoulder a large part of the responsibility while the government acted as a facilitator. "The government expect the operators to properly upgrade the network. We expect TSPs to undertake a special drive for radio frequency optimisation of their network, followed by periodical optimisation. The job of the government and its department is to become a facilitator," he said.
Interestingly, even as grievances relating to call drops have shot up across all circles lately, as per the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) report the parameter call drop rate has shown improvement during December 2014 quarter, compared with the previous quarter.
The permissible limit of call drops set by Trai is anything less than 2%. Trai's findings for the December quarter last year shows the call drop rate improved to 2.7% from 3.28% in September quarter.
G Krishna Kumar, a Bangalore-based telecom professional, said, with a "disparity" in the findings of various agencies on call drops and the actual reality on the ground, the government should look at taking direct feedback from consumers to get the real picture.
"Looking at the disparity between what subscribers experience and what is reported by the network operators/auditors and Trai, the government should actively consider collecting customer perception or quality of experience," he said.
Krishna Kumar also called for strict parameters for measuring the quality of service for data to study whether consumers were really getting 3G and 4G data service for the rates they were paying for. "The special audit suggested by the minister is most welcome. But it all depends on how well the operators will respond to the results," he said.
One of the major reasons for call drops is the resistance of local people against installation of mobile towers in their vicinity because of the propaganda about its health risk.
The minister said such beliefs were aggravating the problem of call drops. "Talk of call drop and campaign for removal of BTS (base tower station) cannot go together. We need telecom infrastructure and BTS to improve service," he said.
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