Lok Sabha Question No. 410 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2018-12-12
Subject: Call Drop Situation
Ministry: COMMUNICATIONS
Asked by: JYOTIRADITYA MADHAVRAO SCINDIA, GAURAV GOGOI

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

## LOK  SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 410 TO BE ANSWERED ON 12 th   DECEMBER, 2018

## CALL DROP SITUATION

410.   SHRI JYOTIRADITYA M. SCINDIA: SHRI GAURAV GOGOI:

Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS be pleased to state:

- (a) whether in view of concerns over the worsening call drop situation in the Country, the Union Government has recently decided to have a meeting with telecom operators to discuss the situation and explore avenues to counter it;
- (b) if  so,  the  details  of  discussions  held  with  the  telecom  operators  and  strategies formulated to counter call drop situation; and
- (c) the number of complaints in regard to call drops received from consumers during the current year and steps taken to check call drops?

## ANSWER

## THE MINISTER OF STATE (IC) OF THE MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS & MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS (SHRI MANOJ SINHA)

- (a) Department  of  Telecommunications  (DoT)  has  been  interacting  with  Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) and reviewing the progress of their action-plans for addressing call drops in their mobile networks on a continuous basis.
- (b) DoT  has  recently  interacted  with  concerned  TSPs  in  October,  2018  to  lay emphasis  on  developing  technological  solutions  by  TSPs  to  monitor  &  address  call drops  in  their  mobile  networks.  TSPs  have  informed  DoT  that  they  have  been continuously  augmenting  the  mobile  networks  across  the  country  to  keep-up  with increasing usage of mobile networks both for voice & data services. Further, they have started implementing  latest  technical  solutions  &  tool-sets  such  as  Geo-location Analysis, Self Organising Networks (S.O.N.), Remote Electrical Antenna Tilt (RET) etc. for monitoring and addressing the identified issues in near real-time.
- (c) About  1570  complaints  relating  to  call  drop/improper  network  coverage  have been received through Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) in DoT during the period, 1 st January 2018 to 5 th December 2018.

In order to address  call-drops, following steps have  been  taken  by  the Government/ TSPs:

(i) DoT has taken several policy initiatives  to facilitate  infrastructure  growth for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum already granted, permitting passive & active infrastructure-sharing, Notification of Right of Way Rules- 2016,making available government land/buildings for installations of towers etc.

(ii) About 9.74 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) for 2G/3G/4GLTE services  have  been  added  by  TSPs  since  July,  2015  across  the  country. The number of BTS installed have been significantly increased from about 7.94 lakh in March 2014 to about 20.07 lakh in November 2018. Moreover, about 9.59 lakh  2G/3G  Cells  have  been  rectified/optimised  by  TSPs  during  July'16  to October'18.

(iii) In order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers, DoT has launched an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein, around 2.15 crore subscribers have been individually contacted since December 2016, out of which 30.1  lakh  subscribers  have  participated  in  the  survey.  The  feedback  is  shared with the TSPs every week for taking corrective actions.

As a result of continuous efforts, significant improvement has been observed in terms of TSPs' compliance to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Quality of Service benchmark(s) on call-drop rate in spite of rapid increase in traffic volume and more stringent TRAI benchmark(s) effective from 1 st October 2017.

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