THE MINISTER OF STATE (IC) OF THE MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS &
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI MANOJ SINHA)
(a) Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has been interacting with Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) and reviewing the progress of their action-plans for addressing call drops in their mobile networks on a continuous basis.
(b) DoT has recently interacted with concerned TSPs in October, 2018 to lay emphasis on developing technological solutions by TSPs to monitor & address call drops in their mobile networks. TSPs have informed DoT that they have been continuously augmenting the mobile networks across the country to keep-up with increasing usage of mobile networks both for voice & data services. Further, they have started implementing latest technical solutions & tool-sets such as Geo-location Analysis, Self Organising Networks (S.O.N.), Remote Electrical Antenna Tilt (RET) etc. for monitoring and addressing the identified issues in near real-time.
(c) About 1570 complaints relating to call drop/improper network coverage have been received through Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) in DoT during the period, 1st January 2018 to 5th December 2018.
In order to address call-drops, following steps have been taken by the Government/ TSPs:
(i) DoT has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum already granted, permitting passive & active infrastructure-sharing, Notification of Right of Way Rules- 2016,making available government land/buildings for installations of towers etc.
(ii) About 9.74 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs since July, 2015 across the country. The number of BTS installed have been significantly increased from about 7.94 lakh in March 2014 to about 20.07 lakh in November 2018. Moreover, about 9.59 lakh 2G/3G Cells have been rectified/optimised by TSPs during July’16 to October’18.
(iii) In order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers, DoT has launched an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein, around 2.15 crore subscribers have been individually contacted since December 2016, out of which 30.1 lakh subscribers have participated in the survey. The feedback is shared with the TSPs every week for taking corrective actions.
As a result of continuous efforts, significant improvement has been observed in terms of TSPs’ compliance to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Quality of Service benchmark(s) on call-drop rate in spite of rapid increase in traffic volume and more stringent TRAI benchmark(s) effective from 1st October 2017.
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