Admitting that fixing the problem of call drops is the responsibility of mobile service providers, Rajan Mathews, director-general of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), promises a significant improvement in quality of service within three months.
In Delhi, however, call drops will continue till problems related to installation of mobile-phone towers are solved, he says.
“We cannot say there will be no dropped calls, but there will be respite. In 60-90 days, you will see a material change. We are currently at a 12 per cent call drop rate; at a general level we will be able to bring it back to 2-3 per cent … but there will still be certain pockets such as Lutyens’ Delhi and Cantonment areas which will always have a problem till we fix tower issues,” he said in an interview with The Hindu .
The COAI represents mobile operators, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Uninor.
Mr. Mathews said besides the lack of towers, change in spectrum frequencies during the last auctions was one of the reasons for a spate of call drops. “As a result of the March auctions, there was reassignment of spectrum. The regulator too had agreed that we need to be given time to re-optimise networks. We have to optimise out networks; it’s not a question. However, it takes times as it is a complex process … It is like changing tyres of a car that is moving at 60 miles an hour,” he said.
He added that re-optimisation of networks will solve about only 20 per cent of the problems.
On the recommendations by TRAI on compensating consumers for call drops, Mr. Mathews said, “I wish it could solve the problem but it would not. There are so many aspects that once needs to looks at. The key factors resulting in the call drops such as non-availability of sites and spectrum constraints will still remain.” The government charged a premium for spectrum that could be used for data and was now blaming the operators for focussing on data services.
