by Salman SH After the first instance of TRAI’s plan of action to keep call drop under control, the regulator has stepped to release a detailed analysis of network performance of top telecom service providers in 7 cities including Delhi and Mumbai. The new report was published after conducting ‘Independent Drive Tests’ across a 600 Km route for Delhi and Mumbai; and a 300 Km route for the other cities. Several drive tests were conducted over the period between June 2015 - December 2015 or January ’16. According to the assessment report, telecom operations in Mumbai, Pune, and Bhubaneswar have not met certain quality requirements with Quality of Service declining exponentially, when compared to the rest of the cities in terms of Radio Frequency (RF) Coverage; Rx Quality; Call setup success rate; call drop rate, voice quality; blocked call and Carrier to Interference ratio. In October, TRAI had ordered that all telecom operators will have to pay Re 1 to compensate consumers in case of call drops. However, consumers’ ability to get credit into their accounts due to call drops is limited to three in a day. The new regulations were supposed to be effective from January 1, 2016, but telecom operators have challenged the order in court. The telecom regulator had issued a consultation paper on call drops in August following numerous complaints from consumers. The consultation paper also suggested mandatory periodic disclosures for telecom operators on their network capacities and the steps taken to optimize their networks. Some notes from the test: Assessment in Mumbai While looking…
