Lok Sabha Question No. 34 (STARRED), answered on 2021-02-03
Subject: Call Drops
Ministry: COMMUNICATIONS
Asked by: Bhagwanth Khuba, Ritesh Pandey

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

## LOK  SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 34 TO BE ANSWERED ON 3 RD  FEBRUARY, 2021

## CALL DROPS

## *34. SHRI BHAGWANTH KHUBA:

Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS be pleased to state:

- (a) whether the Government is aware of the fact that mobile customers have been facing call drop problem  for  last  many  months  and  if  so,  the  details  thereof  and  the  reaction  of  the  Government thereto; and
- (b) the details of strict action taken by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in this regard against the Telecom Service Providers?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, LAW & JUSTICE AND ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)

- (a) & (b) A statement is laid on the Table of the House.

## STATEMENT TO BE LAID ON THE TABLE OF LOK SABHA IN RESPECT OF PARTS (a) & (b) OF LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 34    FOR 3 RD  FEBRUARY, 2021  REGARDING 'CALL DROPS'.

(a) Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in India are required to ensure that the call-drop rate in their mobile networks remains within the benchmarks laid down by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The number  of  incidents  of  Call  Drops/  Improper  Network  Coverage  reported  through  Centralised  Public Grievance  Redressal  And  Monitoring  System  (CPGRAMS)  to  Department  of  Telecommunications  (DoT) during the  year  2020  is  298.  The  reasons  for  Call  Drops  include  insufficient  spectrum  with  TSPs,  network problems of TSPs, non-availability of sites due to acquisition problems etc.

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include-

- (i) Permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum,
- (ii) Permitting passive & active infrastructure sharing,
- (iii) Notification of Right of Way Rules 2016,
- (iv) Making available government land/buildings for installations of towers etc.

Nearly 16.16 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs during the period from March, 2014 (6.49 lakh BTS) to 26 th January 2021 (22.66 lakh BTS) across  the  country.  Moreover,  around  2.28  lakh  mobile  towers  have  been  added  during  the  period  from December 2015 (4.15 lakh mobile towers) to 26 th January 2021 (6.43 lakh mobile towers) across the country.

In order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers, DoT has launched an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) wherein around 4.44 crore subscribers have been individually contacted since December 2016, out of which 61.65 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 1.51 lakh individual cases of call drops have been resolved so far and around 7,395 BTSs have been installed by the TSPs specifically to resolve the call drops issues received through IVRS.

(b) TRAI has been monitoring the performance of 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.

TRAI has issued  'The  Standards  of  Quality  of  Service  of  Basic  Telephone  Service  (Wireline)  and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Fifth Amendment) Regulations, 2017' effective from 1 st October 2017. These Regulations have prescribed two revised stringent parameters for assessing call drop in mobile network, viz. Drop Call Rate(DCR) Spatial distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 2%) implies that at-least 90% of Cells in the network should perform better than specified 2% benchmark on at-least 90% of days. Similarly, another new parameter, DCR Temporal distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 3%) will give confidence that on at-least 90% of Days, network performed better than specified 3% benchmark for at-least 97% of the Cells.

Wherever the benchmark is not met by service provider, the explanation of the service providers is called for and after considering the explanation submitted by service providers in this regard, TRAI imposes financial  disincentives  for  non-compliance  with  the  benchmark.  Effective  from  1 st October 2017, TRAI has introduced a revised graded Financial Disincentives (FD) structure for DCR parameters, based on the extent to which  a  TSP's  performance  deviates  from  the  specified  DCR  benchmark.  Rs.  107.5  Lakhs  as  financial disincentives  have  been  imposed  on  TSPs  for  non-compliance  to  the  revised  DCR  benchmarks  from  the quarter ending June, 2018 to the quarter ending September, 2019.

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