Incidents of call drop on mobile phones

Monday, November 30, 2009: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been monitoring the performance of service providers against the benchmark of less than 3% for call drop rate (Quality of Service Regulations 2005) through quarterly Performance Monitoring Reports (PMRs). As per the PMR for the quarter ended March 2009, only 3 out of 146 (2.05%) of Cellular Mobile Service Providers (licensees) were not meeting the benchmark for Call Drop. The PMR for the quarter ended June, 2009 reveals so that 4 out of 156 (2.56%) service providers are not meeting the benchmark viz M/s Vodafone in Madhya Pradesh (3.28%) and M/s Dishnet in Assam (3.41%) Jammu & Kashmir (3.63) and North East (4.14). This shows that call drop in most of the networks is within the benchmark of <3% laid down by TRAI and Call drop in not increasing day by day. To capture information about the extent of call drops in the various pockets/ areas served by a cell or Based Transceiver Station (BTS), TRAI had been collecting information from service providers about the percentage of cells having more than 3% call drop. As per the information received by the TRAI from the service providers during the month of June 2009, it is seen that in many service areas the call drop in excess of 3% exists in some pockets served by a cell or Bas Transceiver Station (BTS) of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers.

As regards financial loss to customers on account of call drops, the charges are levied to customers upto the duration of the call and rounded to the pulse rate as per his tariff plan which is generally of one minute duration. Since the call drop in most of the networks is generally below 2%, the financial loss to the customers, on an average, would not be considerable. With the per second pulse rate plan being introduced by more and more operators such loss will be negligible.

The Call Drop can happen due to inadequate coverage, interference etc. Further, since the service providers is to ensure coverage in atleast 90% of the District Headquarter/ Town bounded by Municipal limits where service has been rolled out, customer moving from coverage area to a non-coverage area may experience call drop. Thus call drop in wireless networks cannot be removed completely.

TRAI has reviewed the Quality of Service regulation recently and notified on 20th March 2009 “The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service Regulations, 2009” which came into force with effect from 1.7.2009. In these regulations the benchmark for Call Drop Rate has been made more stringent which is <2% as against 3% earlier. There are pockets/ localities where call drop could be a problem due to insufficient coverage, interference etc. To address this issue, TRAI has specified in these new regulations a parameter called “% of worst affected cells having more than 3% Call Drop” enabling the monitoring of the network at cell level by the service providers.

This reply was given by Shri Gurudas Kamat, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology in Lok Sabha today.