Call Drop: A Problem in India

 India is world’s second largest Mobile Market. After China, India has the largest number of mobile subscribers in the world overshot to billion. India’s tele-density has increased and reached up to 74.55 percent. However, there is an unequal pattern of rise in subscriber. Interestingly, the gap between urban and rural is significant.

Urban tele-density is above 100 across India. For example Delhi’s has 222.78, highest in India. Beside this, in order to take advantage of technologies in governance and service delivery, government of India has launched ambitious programs like Digital India, m-governance, m-banking etc. The primary aim – of these schemes are to increase connectivity and thereby reduce the digital divide. High value scheme’s like NOFN has failed to deliver. With rise of mobile subscriber in rural areas government, now, is in rush to give impetus to financial inclusion and promote inclusive growth. The outcome of all this would depend on better mobile connectivity. But the unexpected rise in calldrops caused to government’s dismay. Envisaging its impact on government schemes, Government has warned telecoms to fix the issue as soon as possible. Call drop is performance indicator for the country’s telecom networks.

What is call drop

Call drop is defined as hanging of call when the talk between two individuals isn’t over or before one of them had hung up. But technically, Call drop is an inability of telecom operator to maintain the connection once it’s established between the two people until the talk is not over.

Reasons

However, there are multiple reasons for it. For example

• Inadequate infrastructure – There is unavailability of infrastructure to cater the increasing subscriber base. For example, network capacity to accommodate to high volume of users.
• Lesser investment in infrastructure by telecom operators – Telecoms are always blamed that they have not invested enough in the development of infrastructure. They are not keeping with the pace of subscriber growth.
• Shortage of spectrum – The radio frequency allocated by the government through auctions for transmitting voice and data is short. Since, Mobile phones work using radio waves in the frequency range of 300 MHz and 3,000 MHz and the radio frequency available within this range is less. Capacity utilization and proper handling of location transfer – large number of call drop takes place during switching of towers.
• Sealing of towers – the decision to remove towers from non-commercial areas and residential areas by municipality and states governments also caused call drops.
• Large number of operators – India has 13 operators as compared to 5 of developed countries. Due to competition in the market and pressure to increase revenue base many operators revised their plans to attract consumer even though they don’t have enough infrastructure to support it.
• Call drops also caused due customer handset compatibility issues, credit limit, outstanding balance, etc.

As per Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Regulations, 2009, call drop rate, averaged over a calendar month, of any telephone company should not exceed 2 per cent. However, according to TRAI (Telecom regulatory authority of India) dropped call rate (DCR) below than 3 out of 100 is permissible. But DCR in some metropolitan is above one in ten. This increases frustration among the subscribers and tastes their patience.

Call drop is largely an urban phenomenon but its impact is not limited to urban areas only. It has direct bearing on consumer’s pocket. Therefore, TRAI has asked telecoms to compensate user for the calldrops. In order to pacify, some operators has devised mechanism of charging user for per second instead of per minute. But palliative solutions like this are will not work for longtime.

Calldrop is an indicator of connectivity issue. It would be major stumbling block for government’s initiative in rural areas where millions of users are accessing internet thorough mobile phone. For example, it is setback to digital India initiative, which aims to bring connectivity, promote financial inclusion and inclusive growth.

Operators often argue that 100 percent coverage is not possible in radio network. They, however, demand more spectrum and uniform policies for setting up towers to resolve the issue of call drops.

In order to address the issue several initiatives has been suggested, which can be understood as follows as –

• Telecoms ask for de-sealing of towers and give speedy license, which would help them to address the issue effectively.
• The Cellular Operators Association of India COAI further said that call drop is not a pan-India issue and is restricted to some select areas wherein lack of site availability, lack of Right of Way (RoW) for in-building solutions and non-operational towers are prevalent
• Tower sharing – For smooth handling of movement of user, tower sharing is good option.
• Spectrum should be increased. For example, UK operators have 2-3 times more spectrum then Indian operators to serve one third of India’s population.
• Operators need to increase investment in infrastructure development.
• Fear of radiation – Telecom minister has described that there is no fear of radiation. However, Indian norms are much tougher than over 90 percent.

In order to silence the critics operators like Telenor has decided to reimburse users for call drops and commit for higher quality of customer services. It is worth mentioning that the impact of calldrop is not confined to mobile subscriber only. Rather, it has wider consequences. For example, it would hamper government ambitious governance plans. And therefore, Government appears serious to fix the issue and can take steps viable steps like it can release unused spectrum from defense service, encourage states to apply uniform procedures on towers and finally set up nationally publicized database on calldrops to force defaulter companies to improve on their services, without fail.