(a) whether the Government maintains any data on call drops in the country;
(b) if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor;
(c) whether it is true that the problem of call drops and bad call signal is persistent in tourist areas and if so, the details thereof;
(d) the steps taken by the Government to remedy such issues; and
(e) whether the Government has held any meetings with TRAI and telecom company representatives on these issues and if so, the details thereof?
MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS
(SHRI DEVUSINH CHAUHAN)
(a) & (b) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been monitoring the performance of Telecom Service Providers (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. As per PMR for Cellular Mobile Telephone Services for the quarter ending December - 2021 of TRAI, all TSPs except M/s BSNL in one LSA (West Bengal) are complying to the benchmarks related to Drop Call Rate (DCR) Spatial distribution measure (benchmark = 2%) and DCR Temporal distribution measure (benchmark = 3%).
Moreover, 471 complaints regarding Call Drop/ Improper Network Coverage have been reported through Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) from 1st January, 2021 to 20th March, 2022.
(c) The issue of mobile call drop might exist in tourist areas depending upon factors such as type of terrain, vegetation, other technical parameters like characteristics of radio propagation for wireless communication, non-availability of sites due to acquisition problems , technology deployed, availability of line of sight, backhaul media connectivity, number of simultaneous users etc. The occurrence of call drops is found to be common in mobile networks across the world with varying degree of occurrences.
(d) & (e) DoT has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum, permitting passive & active infrastructure sharing, making government land/buildings available for installations of towers, etc. Nearly,16.80 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs during the period from March 2014 to 22nd March 2022 across the country.
Further, in order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers on call drop, DoT has launched an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein around 5.67 crore subscribers have been individually contacted since December 2016. Out of these, 73.61 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 1.73 lakh individual cases of call drops have been resolved so far and around 7,956 BTSs have been installed by the TSPs specifically to resolve the call drop issues received through IVRS.
DoT also holds meetings with TRAI and TSPs from time to time on the issue. Last meeting in this regard was held with TSPs and TRAI in the month of January, 2022.