Cheaper mobile sets, poor radio coverage due to non availability of suitable tower-locations, radio interference due to unauthorised use of repeaters, and change in pattern of traffic due to exponential growth in data traffic due to more use of smartphones, are some of the reasons responsible for the ‘call drop’ menace in the country.
Officials of Bharti Airtel, who made submission before a Parliamentary Standing Committee, stated that the mobile that cost Rs3,000 or Rs4,000 or some smartphones that come mainly from China tend to have poorer quality of antenna, poorer quality of radio equipment, and many other technical problems.
These devices are mainly imported from China and they tend to have poor quality of antenna and poor quality of radio equipment.
On the other hand, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) submitted that there are several factors responsible for the “call drops” in the networks, and most of these are beyond telecom operators’ control
The committee headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur has recommended that since call drop takes place due to several factors and no single isolated reason can be attributed to call drop, there is an urgent need for all stakeholders, the department, the Telecom Authority, Telecom Service Providers and consumers at large to act together in unison on various issues so as to address the problems. As per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, total mobile phone users are 1,200 million in the country.
Interestingly consumers have raised the issue of call drops at various levels, complaining that their experience of making voice calls has deteriorated. The issue of too frequent call drops annoyed not only the consumers and businesses but also became a major cause of concern for policy makers and Parliamentarians. The telecom operators said that the dropped call rate is an important measure for voice calls. “The performance of Service Providers on call drop is assessed for both 2G and 3G services through two parameters viz. “call drop rate (benchmark 2 per cent)” on monthly average basis for the licensed Service Area and “worst affected cells having more than 3 per cent traffic channel drop (benchmark 3 per cent),” it said.
On the submission of telecom operators, the committee identified other reasons such as poor radio coverage due to non availability of suitable tower-locations, sealing of towers by local authorities, radio interference due to unauthorised use of repeaters, change in pattern of traffic due to exponential growth in data traffic due to more use of smart phones which results in shrinkage of 3G/ 4G cell size, loading of available spectrum due to limited spectrum with very high users and non availability of 24x7 power resulting in shutdown of tower for call drop.
Expressing concern over increasing call drop, the Committee noted that one of the major concerns raised by consumers regarding Quality of Service is call drop.
Interestingly, the Telecom Engineering Centre has set a handset interface requirement, these requirements have not been enforced strictly. Despite, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology have mandated that there should be BIS standards which should be applicable to all consumer electronic items including handsets and all electronic items which are imported or otherwise.
“Though there is a progressive development of domestic electronic hardware manufacturing, the telecom equipment requirement in the country are still met to a large extent through substantial quantity of import,” the Committee said.