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Call drops will be one of the main items on the agenda when Minister of State for Communications (independent) Manoj Sinha meets the Chief Executive Officers of telecom operators on Monday.
This will be Sinha’s first meeting with the operators after his induction as the minister in the Cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.
“The meeting is scheduled at 11 AM on Monday and various issues will be discussed with the Minister,” a government source told BusinessLine .
The CEOs may also share their grievances, such as ‘right of way (RoW)’ and a uniform policy for rolling out telecom infrastructure across the country, which have still not been taken up.
“Another core focus of the meeting will be around the upcoming spectrum auctions and issues like spectrum usage charges (SUC),” said an official at one of the operators.
However, the call drop issue is likely to be discussed at length, as the Minister highlighted the issue in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, when he said operators would face action for using radio-link technology (RLT) to mask call drops.
Responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha on usage of RLT, Sinha said in a written reply that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), through agencies, had conducted drive tests of mobile networks in 12 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and had found that some of the service providers in these cities had high RLT values.
This indicates that a call can be sustained for a longer time even with poor quality, resulting in a poor customer experience, Sinha said, in the reply.
Auction challenges According to industry veterans, the success or failure of the upcoming spectrum auctions will depend on Sinha, as on the one hand, there are issues such as RoW, and on the other, companies are not ready to bid for the 700MHz band, which is reserved at a premium price for each MHz.
Meanwhile, the Telecom Commission will also meet on Monday to discuss SUC issues for the upcoming spectrum auctions in September.
Monday’s decision is expected to be final for the upcoming auctions and may go to the Cabinet for full and final approval, government sources said.
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