With the apex court striking down TRAI’s regulation on call drops, mobile users can only hope that technology will come to their rescue. Call drops happen due to a number of reasons, ranging from lack of an adequate number of towers in a particular area to heavy congestion during peak hours, when a lot of users are either talking or downloading videos simultaneously. Sometimes call drops happen because telecom operators divert bandwidth channels to higher paying data users, impacting the quality of voice calls.
“The solution to the problem can be found if we know the reason. It is difficult to analyse the reason for call drops since the volume of voice data generated is huge and the reasons for call drops are varied — network failures, handset compatibility issues, handover issues, credit limit, outstanding balance etc. But data analytics can help plug the gaps if the telecom operators are willing to invest,” said an executive at a European telecom equipment firm.
According to industry experts, there are four ways to improve the quality of services. There are smart antennas and spectrum efficiency devices that allow operators to pack more traffic within limited spectrum. In-Building Solutions and Small Cells deployment improves indoor coverage. Again, with most operators having multiple spectrum bands, inter layer optimisation is crucial to ensure seamless mobility across the technology.
Operators such as Vodafone and Airtel are implementing a software solution called Self Optimising Network (SON) which enables mobility load balancing where tower sites suffering congestion can transfer their load to other towers with spare resources.
“We have been working on a war footing on improving quality of service. We mapped the big cities in the top markets in the form of grids and we have separate teams working on each one of these grids to provide fantastic experience that includes getting sites, getting fibre, whatever is required,” said Vodafone India CEO Sunil Sood. He added that there has been a 40 per cent reduction in the operator’s dropped calls.
“The industry has made consistent and significant efforts to optimise networks, which have largely been completed, with more than two lakh sites being installed in the last 15 months for 2G and 3G services across the country since January 1, 2015. These efforts will begin to improve quality,” said an industry representative.
“Operators have to devise a mechanism where only ‘credible’ and ‘reliable’ devices are allowed to latch on to the network. They also need to have systems and technology in place where quality of apps can be continuously monitored and inefficient apps should be mentored to improve their designs and make themselves apt for the network,” said Faisal Kawoosa of CyberMedia Research.