Invest more in tech to tackle call drops, DoT tells telcos

The government on Tuesday while reiterating that there is no scope for a uniform tower policy, pulled up the telecom companies for showing wrong calculation of their spends on spectrum.

The telecom companies are showing spend on auction as part of capacity expenditure, which according to the Department of Telecom is wrong. Such reasons cannot be brought when issues such as call drops are discussed, Rakesh Garg, Secretary, DoT, said on Tuesday.

At the earlier meeting, the telecom service providers had given various reasons including inability to install towers at residential areas because of resistance by the residents fearing radiation.

The Secretary said the companies are coming up with such reasons for not being able to curb the issues of call drops, which is ‘unacceptable’ and said the companies should invest more in newer technologies to solve the problems.

“A presentation was made by the industry claiming to have made investment of ₹1.34 lakh crore out of which ₹24,000 crore was for capital equipment with a capex to revenue ratio of 73 per cent against global coverage of 12-18 per cent,” he said.

But, DoT mentioned that “₹1.10 lakh crore was towards the spectrum acquired through auction and can’t be counted towards investment for reinforcement of infrastructure by way of installing towers and base stations.” “If this expenditure on spectrum is taken out, it is only 13 per cent. It was stressed that the operators need to augment the infrastructure by way of additional towers and base stations in order to address the issue of call drops and quality of service,” Garg said.

On question of operators stating that lack of spectrum availability was one of the reasons for call drops, he said there are enough spectrum available with the telecom companies and it is just that they are not willing investing to utilise them the best.

“The government has been adding up more spectrum in their kitty since 2010 through auctions, so now is the time for the telecom companies to invest on new equipment to solve such issues,” he said.

He said technologies are changing hands and from earlier 2G and 3G technologies, now the word is LTE technology and since the companies have long-term investment plans, they should start doing now.