Lok Sabha Question No. 4394 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2022-03-30
Subject: Data on Call Drop
Ministry: COMMUNICATIONS
Asked by: Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4394 TO BE ANSWERED ON 30 TH  MARCH, 2022

## DATA ON CALL DROP

## 4394.   SHRI LAVU SRI KRISHNA DEVARAYALU:

Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS be pleased to state:

- (a) whether the Government maintains any data on call drops in the country;
- (b) if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor;
- (c) whether it is true that the problem of call drops and bad call signal is persistent in tourist areas and if so, the details thereof;
- (d) the steps taken by the Government to remedy such issues; and
- (e) whether  the  Government  has  held  any  meetings  with  TRAI  and  telecom  company representatives on these issues and if so, the details thereof?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS (SHRI DEVUSINH CHAUHAN)

(a) & (b) Telecom  Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)  has been monitoring the performance of Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for the License Service Area (LSA) as a whole, through  Quarterly  Performance  Monitoring  Reports  (PMRs)  submitted  by  them  against  the benchmarks  for  various  Quality  of  Service  parameters  laid  down  by  TRAI.  As  per  PMR  for Cellular Mobile Telephone Services for the quarter ending December - 2021 of TRAI, all TSPs except M/s BSNL in one LSA (West Bengal) are complying to the benchmarks related to Drop Call Rate (DCR) Spatial distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 2%) and DCR Temporal distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 3%).

Moreover, 471 complaints regarding Call Drop/ Improper Network Coverage have been reported through Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) from 1 st January, 2021 to 20 th March, 2022.

(c) The issue of mobile call drop might exist in tourist areas depending upon factors such as type of terrain, vegetation, other technical parameters like characteristics of radio propagation for wireless  communication,  non-availability  of  sites  due  to  acquisition  problems  ,  technology deployed, availability of line of sight, backhaul media connectivity, number of simultaneous users etc. The occurrence of call drops is found to be common in mobile networks across the world with varying degree of occurrences.

(d) & (e) DoT  has  taken  several  policy  initiatives  to  facilitate  infrastructure  growth  for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum, permitting passive & active infrastructure sharing, making government land/buildings available for installations of towers, etc. Nearly,16.80 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs during the period from March 2014 to 22 nd March 2022 across the country.

Further, in order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers on call drop, DoT has launched an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein around 5.67 crore subscribers have been individually  contacted  since  December  2016.  Out  of  these,  73.61  lakh  subscribers  have participated in the survey. The feedback is shared with the TSPs for taking corrective actions in a time bound manner. As a result, about 1.73 lakh individual cases of call drops have been resolved so far and around 7,956 BTSs have been installed by the TSPs specifically to resolve the call drop issues received through IVRS.

DoT also holds meetings with TRAI and TSPs from time to time on the issue. Last meeting in this regard was held with TSPs and TRAI in the month of January, 2022.

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