Telecom regulator TRAI received the maximum number of complaints for call drops against Bharti Airtel, followed by Vodafone, Idea Cellular and BSNL, this year. There were 31 complaints of call drops against Airtel in 2015 (up to June 30), followed by 17 against Vodafone and 10 each for BSNL and Idea Cellular, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.
Besides, TRAI received eight complaints against Reliance Communications, two against MTS, and one each against Aircel and Tata during the reported period. Call drop in a network can occur due to various reasons, including insufficient coverage due to paucity of mobile towers and handover failure due to network congestion on account of more users in a particular area.
The Minister said that Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has laid down quality of service parameters for mobile phone services. “As per these regulations, TRAI has been monitoring the performance for service providers against the quality of service benchmarks for the various parameters through quarterly performance monitoring reports,” Prasad said.
The call drop rate should be less than 2 per cent, according to the TRAI benchmark. Prasad said that the performance of service providers against the benchmark for call drops is monitored by TRAI and in this regard, meetings have been held by the regulator with operators for improving their performance.
“According to service providers, the common reasons attributed to call drops are equipment faults, frequent load shedding in some circles, difficulty in site acquisition, shutting of existing mobile towers due to radiation concerns and restrictions near international border,” the Minister said.
“Meetings with telecom service providers have been held in April as well as second week of July, 2015 on the call drop issue, wherein they have been asked to take immediate measures to address issues of call drops by radio frequency optimisation, installation of new sites and in-building solutions,” he added.
The Department of Telecom (DoT), on its part, has asked all mobile operators to submit a report on the action taken by them to address the problem by July 31. “The issue of call drops in mobile networks has been reviewed in the Department.
It was felt that there is an urgent need to address the menace of call drops,” DoT said in a letter to telecom players dated July 17. The letter said that it is necessary that service providers undertake a special drive for radio frequency optimisation, analyse the reasons of call drops and take appropriate steps viz installation of more sites, adopting in-building solutions, augmenting existing radio frequency resources as the case may be. “An action taken report may be furnished to this office by July 31,” the letter said.
Bharti Infratel net profit jumps 24%
Bharti Infratel on Wednesday reported 24 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 576 crore for the quarter ended June 30. It had reported net profit of Rs 463 crore in the April- June quarter of last financial year, the company said in a statement. Revenue of the company rose 6 per cent to Rs 3,016 crore for the first quarter of 2015-16, as compared to Rs 2,843 crore in the year-ago period.
“India today is one of the fastest growing countries in terms of new Internet users. This opportunity can only be leveraged by rollout of quality networks and introduction of new technologies by telecom operators,” Bharti Infratel Ltd Chairman Akhil Gupta said.
Large spectrum investments are already done and incremental investments in additional sites to effectively utilise the spectrum are relatively small, which would result into large number of deployments by operators, he added.
The company said its total tower base stood at 86,397 with an average sharing factor of 2.13. Its consolidated EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) or operating profit improved to Rs 1,302 crore, up 10 per cent year-on-year.
The company said it has approved the establishment of sponsored level 1 ADR programme in the United States. The ADRs can be traded on the US over-the-counter. “Citi?s issuer services business, acting through Citibank N.A., has been appointed as the depositary bank for this sponsored level 1 ADR programme,” the statement said. Shares of the company closed at Rs 457.05 apiece, up 1.75 per cent, on the BSE. Videocon Telecom on Wednesday said that it has narrowed down operating loss to Rs 44.75 crore for the first quarter ended June 30. The company reported an operating loss of Rs 75.9 crore for the same quarter last financial year.