From the call drop menace to the telecom industry’s call for spectrum regime, TRAI’s new Chairman RS Sharma has hit the ground running. In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg TV India, Sharma lays down the regulatory roadmap for taking India’s communications and digital architecture to the next level.

Call drops have been a cause of concern for the operators as well the consumers. The operators are being made the punching bag— it is alleged they aren’t doing enough or that they are probably doing it deliberately. How do you view this situation?

Call drop is a serious problem and the way this is happening is some places in the country, at least I find that it is highly unacceptable. You can’t have a conversation where every conversation drops down in 30 seconds. So that's something someone will have to do something about. My approach is not really to find faults or before even diagnosing the problem announce the judgment.

So what I had done initially is study the problem. Let's really diagnose the issues. So we have carried out a complete analysis of data pertaining to Mumbai and Delhi to begin with wherein we are saying that let's take the overall data and then see what percentage of these calls were dropped by the system on an average — and in many times the average creates a problem because they hide many things.

So what we are saying is let’s have an analysis of why the call drops and then we will come to know whether the average is okay within 2 per cent. But then there are areas where it is very serious. In that analysis, we are also examining as to what are the root causes of call drops. Many a times, it could be (a) the availability of the towers, (b) it could be poor capitalisation or utility of the system and other reasons like movements or handing over from one tower to another tower, when you move from one place to another.

There are multiple reasons for the call drops and we are analysing as to what is the percentage of each reason, what is the contribution which it is making. That will give us a very clear picture as to what kind of steps will have to be taken by various stakeholders to really reduce this problem or eliminate this problem. So that's one part. Secondly, we are also bringing out a detailed information paper.

Which will provide a detailed analysis?

Absolutely.

By when?

This, I think, will take another seven or eight days. We shall be able to bring out the paper.

Will it be confined to Mumbai or Delhi?

It will at the beginning be confined to that because we don’t have the raw data for the other places. But I propose to do this analysis for the entire country and we propose to establish a dashboard where you should be able to see the status, real time analysis because every stakeholder wants to see it on the dashboard as to what is the status on infrastructure, call drops and statistics, etc — operator-wise analysis.

Fear of radiation from cell phone towers is often cited as a key reason why the telecom companies are unable to improve their network…

TRAI, for your information, had brought a paper on this issue as to what is the EMF radiation from the tower.

How many people would have understood that language?

I understand. I completely agree whatever I have been able to do as a member of Telecom Commission and as somebody who has been sort of dealing with this space for some time now. I am completely convinced that the kind of power that is emitted out of the telecom tower is certainly not going to cause any damage. No study in the world thus far has indicated that there are deleterious effect on health. But still people have those concerns. I agree with you that we should be much more forthcoming and we should demonstrate and we should make comparisons to see that this radiation —so called radiations — is not really going to cause harm.

Shouldn’t we compare it with cigarette boxes that are freely available?

There can be many comparisons which can be made, I can tell you.

The State doesn’t interfere in the choice of smoking. Why should the state interfere or any authority interfere in the choice of installation of tower if it is a contract between private parties.

The State is not interfering by the way.

I mean agencies.

This is largely an issue and this is not even a municipality issue. Basically it’s largely an issue of the resident welfare associations, largely a public perception which is going around saying that these EMF radiations cause cancer and things like that. This, to the best of my knowledge, is not really true.

Do you blame the industry and operators for failing to educate the masses?

Many a times what happens is that when you are an operator, people look at you as an interested party and therefore, your credibility is not there. People think that because you are an interested person you want to put the tower and therefore you must be having some agenda in doing that and therefore you are trying to convince that it doesn’t have any effect.

But I think if there are objective studies, if there are objective uninterested parties or objective parties which actually make that clear statement and demonstrate it. I think there are a lot of misconceptions going around this part.

If you don’t have tower and more power is emitted from the mobile set and therefore though I don’t mean saying that this radiation itself is not harmful at all.

Even the set cannot emit the radiation beyond the standard for which it is built. Nevertheless, the total amount of radiation which you are subjected to, though it is harmless, is more in the second case where you don’t have tower nearby than in the first case when you’ve a tower.

With high levels of debt and the previous spectrum pricing experience, it is important to keep in mind the long term affordability and public service also…

It is fine, but you also understand that the only way in which the natural resources, as the Supreme Court has also said in its multiple rulings, can be given to any entity is through open and transparent auction process.

Which is happening in the Radio FM auctions but there is no absurd bidding happening…

No, No! But then absurd bidding is not something that the government is creating, right!

But the operators say that you released it in small amounts?

It’s not really correct to make that kind of statement that the government is doing it with a profit motive. At least I am not privy or aware of that situation. It’s an open process and people participate and people bid and whatever the bids are there they sort of go along with that.

I take heart from you that you don’t think that it should be a profit-making enterprise…

No, I mean who is making the profits? It’s a natural resource which is being allocated on the basis of the auction price and that ultimately is the money which goes to the Consolidated Fund of the country.

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