(a) whether the Government is aware of the fact that mobile customers have been facing call drop problem for last many months and if so, the details thereof and the reaction of the Government thereto; and
(b) the details of strict action taken by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in this regard against the Telecom Service Providers?
MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, LAW & JUSTICE AND
ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)
(a) & (b) A statement is laid on the Table of the House.
STATEMENT TO BE LAID ON THE TABLE OF LOK SABHA IN RESPECT OF PARTS (a) & (b) OF LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 34 FOR 3RD FEBRUARY, 2021 REGARDING “CALL DROPS”.
(a) Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in India are required to ensure that the call-drop rate in their mobile networks remains within the benchmarks laid down by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The number of incidents of Call Drops/ Improper Network Coverage reported through Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) during the year 2020 is 298. The reasons for Call Drops include insufficient spectrum with TSPs, network problems of TSPs, non-availability of sites due to acquisition problems etc.
Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include-
(i) Permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum,
(ii) Permitting passive & active infrastructure sharing,
(iii) Notification of Right of Way Rules 2016,
(iv) Making available government land/buildings for installations of towers etc.
Nearly 16.16 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs during the period from March, 2014 (6.49 lakh BTS) to 26th January 2021 (22.66 lakh BTS) across the country. Moreover, around 2.28 lakh mobile towers have been added during the period from December 2015 (4.15 lakh mobile towers) to 26th January 2021 (6.43 lakh mobile towers) across the country.
In order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers, DoT has launched an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein around 4.44 crore subscribers have been individually contacted since December 2016, out of which 61.65 lakh subscribers have participated in the survey. The feedback is shared with the TSPs for taking corrective actions in a time bound manner. As a result, about 1.51 lakh individual cases of call drops have been resolved so far and around 7,395 BTSs have been installed by the TSPs specifically to resolve the call drops issues received through IVRS.
(b) TRAI has been monitoring the performance of TSPs for the License Service Area (LSA) as a whole, through Quarterly Performance Monitoring Reports (PMRs) submitted by them against the benchmarks for various Quality of Service parameters laid down by TRAI.
TRAI has issued “The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Fifth Amendment) Regulations, 2017” effective from 1st October 2017. These Regulations have prescribed two revised stringent parameters for assessing call drop in mobile network, viz. Drop Call Rate(DCR) Spatial distribution measure (benchmark = 2%) implies that at-least 90% of Cells in the network should perform better than specified 2% benchmark on at-least 90% of days. Similarly, another new parameter, DCR Temporal distribution measure (benchmark = 3%) will give confidence that on at-least 90% of Days, network performed better than specified 3% benchmark for at-least 97% of the Cells.
Wherever the benchmark is not met by service provider, the explanation of the service providers is called for and after considering the explanation submitted by service providers in this regard, TRAI imposes financial disincentives for non-compliance with the benchmark. Effective from 1st October 2017, TRAI has introduced a revised graded Financial Disincentives (FD) structure for DCR parameters, based on the extent to which a TSP’s performance deviates from the specified DCR benchmark. Rs. 107.5 Lakhs as financial disincentives have been imposed on TSPs for non-compliance to the revised DCR benchmarks from the quarter ending June, 2018 to the quarter ending September, 2019.
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