Over 62% customers face call drops, says government survey

All States were covered by the survey, which used IVRS

A mirror reflection of a mobile signal tower in a shopping mall in Pudukkad,on the Ernakulam-Thrissur Highway in Kerala. Mobile companies have imposed strict rules for new mobile connections from March 1, 2004 to avoid misuse of mobiles. The customer has to submit personal identity proof, adress proof and photograph in addition to filling a detailed form. The connection activation time for postpaid is 5 days and prepaid is 48 hours. Companies hope to compensate for the anticipated loss of customers by adopting aggressive marketing techniques. The last survey in November 2004 a total of about 18.5 lakh connections exists in Kerala. Photo: K.K. Mustafah

The Centre on Thursday said over 62% of the 2.20 lakh subscribers that it surveyed complained of call drops.

The survey was conducted using the Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had rolled out last December in Delhi, Mumbai, UP, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Goa. By March, all States were covered under the system.

“Since the launch of the IVRS system on Decemebr 23, 2016 till February 28, 2017, 16,61,640 successful outbound calls have been made to subscribers of all TSPs across the country. About 2,20,935 subscribers participated in the survey out of which, about 1,38,072 (62.5%) subscribers have reported call drops,” according to a statement issued by the DoT.

As per the feedback received the problem of call drops “is more severe” indoors, according to the statement.

The subscribers receive an IVRS call from short code 1955 and are asked a few questions on the call drop problem. They can also send a toll-free SMS to the same short code, containing the name of city/town/village, where they face frequent call drops.

The feedback is then shared with the telecom service providers on weekly basis to take action in a time bound manner. “The TSPs have set up an elaborate mechanism for using the IVRS feedback data sent by DoT,” according to the statement.

The operators have installed about 2,12,917 additional Base Transceiver Stations across the country during June 2016 to February 2017, the DoT added.

The telecos submit action taken report to DoT Task Force every fortnight. Additionally, the DoT Task Force meets with the TSPs once a month to discuss the issues that come up via the IVRS.

The DoT said for the period February 15-28, 43,403 feedback cases were taken up for investigation by the operators. “After telephonic calls and SMS to the subscribers to seek additional information on their call drop problem, 7,210 cases were identified for resolution. During the fortnight, 2,467 cases were resolved through optimization, rectifying hardware/power problems, through field visits.”

On cumulative basis, since launch of IVRS, a total of 9,328 cases have been resolved through the initiative. Further, about 5,529 cases which were not associated with call drops but related to data, roaming and billing.