The government’s intervention has led to a decline in frequent call drops faced by mobile phone users with private operators installing over 22,000 new cell sites between July and October, while the number of dysfunctional sites has come down to 13,823 across the country, Telecom Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said.
“Earlier (in September) 35,000 cell sites were found to be defective. At last count, the number stood at 25,598. Out of this 13,775 sites have been repaired and 13,823 are still pending,” Mr Prasad said. Between the July and October period private operators have installed 7,528 new 2G sites and 14,751 new 3G sites across the country, he said. A total of 18.33 lakh mobile sites are being operated by telecom service providers across the country.
The problem of call drops have improved in New Delhi but operators still didn’t meet the quality parameters of less that 2 per cent, he said. According to a survey done by TERM cell -- the vigilance and resource monitoring arm of the Department of Telecom, call drops on Bharti Airtel network in Delhi, which was in the range of 2.92 - 17.77 in August, improved to 0.08-2.98 at the end of October.
