Prasad Sounds New Steps to Address Call Drop Menace

NEW DELHI: A day after the telecom regulator came out with report on quality services, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday said that there have been some improvements over the past few days and there is a lot of scope for further improvement, therefore new steps have to be taken.

The minister said “NDMC has been approached and they are willing to give their sites. The post office is ready to give sites and I have instructed MTNL and others to go for in-building solutions for Parliament, North Block and South Block to improve further.” The ministry is monitoring all the situations closely, he further added.

The total cell sites the government has installed across the country is 18,33,276. The new cell sites for 2G services are 7,528 and for 3G services are 14,751. In Delhi, they have installed 760 2G and 1,332 3G. BSNL has installed 25,000 cell.

TRAI on Tuesday in its report said that mobile operators had a call drop rate of as much as 24.59 per cent for 2G services and 16.13 per cent for 3G services during the April-June quarter. Last month, the regulatory body had mandated that telcos from the month of January should compensate users at the rate of `1 per call drop, with the ceiling of `3 per day or three calls dropped.

Sunil Sood, Managing Director and CEO of Vodafone earlier said that there is a need to work with the government and the regulator to resolve the call drop issue.

Even at this juncture, he is hopeful that the issue can be resolved through a dialogue.

Working closely with the local departments like municipal corporations and TSPs, there have been improvements in the mobile telephony services over the past few months, Prasad added.

Apart from addition of mobile sites, operators are also deploying in-building solutions to check the problem. The operators, however, are complaining about sealing of sites by local bodies like MCD, which hampers their efforts to reduce call drops.

Dear readers, please share your views and opinions about these new attractive offers by BSNL via comments with us.