For a lasting solution to call drops

Last week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued two major amendments related to mobile call drops — The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Services (wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Fourth Amendment) Regulations 2015 and The Telecom Consumers’ Protection (Ninth Amendment) Regulations 2015. The former has increased the financial disincentives on telecom service providers (TSPs) for non-compliance with the benchmark for network-related as well as customer-related parameters, while the latter has mandated compensation to consumers for call drops beginning from January 1, 2016.

Will these measures reduce call drops while addressing the issues that result in them?

The actual thrust from the department of telecom (DoT) and TRAI started after the Prime Minister himself raised the issue in August this year while reviewing the various infrastructure bottlenecks in the country and directed DoT officials to solve the problem soon. The telecom minister had rightly called it a “national problem”.

The telecom secretary met all the TSPs back in April this year and also brought in some policy level interventions, but no real progress was seen on the ground. The TRAI report on the independent drive rests (IDT) in the metros of Delhi and Mumbai conducted in June/July and then repeated on September 27-28 found that the call drop rate for most of the TSPs was higher than the permissible limit of less than 2 per cent.

What is the real cause of these call drops? Technical shortcomings ? TSPs have defended their position by citing sufficient capital expenditure to set up and maintain networks and the difficulties regarding shortage of spectrum and its harmonisation, poor enforcement of mobile tower policy and right of way guidelines, massive interference from illegal wideband radios, and the difficulties dealing with the various municipalities.

But according to TRAI, investment in network infrastructure remained inadequate. The TSPs also tried to pitch in the issue of shift in usage patterns from voice to data and then again from 2G to 3G/LTE services.

Clearly, many of these arguments were not fully acceptable to DoT or even to the regulator. The Centre agreed to the TSPs’ demands for more government buildings to be made available for installation of towers and dispel fears around harmful radiation that resulted in the demolition of many towers.

Just recently, the telecom minister revealed that TSPs were cooperating with DoT and TRAI and out of the 34,460 mobile sites found to be defective , 16,962 had been fixed in the third week of September. At the same time, responding to the consultation paper from TRAI suggesting the route of compensation for call drops, TSPs have outlined the steps they were taking to address the issue.

Clearly the State governments and municipalities have to be approached and dealt with by DoT, and a common tariff structure for cell towers and right of way organised so that the TSPs don’t fall prey to their machinations. The issue of 24x7 electricity to these towers has also to be addressed. Likewise, the interference from illegal wideband radios have to be stopped, both from within the country and from across the borders.

While compensation may be a short-term solution, it could speed up capacity augmentation by TSPs. They have two months in whichto beat these penalties. However, on network optimisation, they have lost a lot of time and must conform to the benchmark proposed.

Clearly, the demand for connectivity will rise and if it has to match with overall growth imperatives, the necessary steps will involve a review right from licensing terms to more innate network technology deployment. Since revenues are not an issue for TSPs and the Centre has been open on the issue, business interests should drive operators to improve their act, rather than bringing down their reputation and trust with consumers and deal with negative consequences such as penalties.

The writer is former India head of General Dynamics and a consultant on technology issues