With call drops continuing to be a cause of concern for mobilephone users and the government, the Department of Telecommunications plans to meet telecom service providers on Wednesday to discuss the issue as well as review the new service quality norms that have been implemented in the sector.
The meeting with the top officials of the telecom companies will be chaired by Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, DoT, who is expected to also discuss the new stringent call drop norms that were enforced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in October last year.
“We want to convey the government’s concerns on the state of call drops. Service providers have to get their act together,” Sundararajan told reporters here.
Meanwhile, the Telecom Commission will also meet on Tuesday to discuss multiple issues, including some recommendations made by the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) on relief measures for the stressed industry, particularly, raising of spectrum caps.
Sundararajan was speaking on the sidelines of a conference, marking the completion of the first phase of BharatNet project.
The government said one lakh gram panchayats (GPs) have been provided with hi-speed broadband connectivity under Phase I of the project, and it hopes to provide broadband connectivity to 1.5 lakh GPs under the next phase, by December.
“We have already started Phase II... The Cabinet has already approved it. We hope it will be completed well in time by December 2018,” Sundararajan said. The original timeline for completion of Phase II is March 2019. Stating that the tender process for the next phase has already started, Sundararajan she said State-owned BSNL has floated its tenders.
Sundararajan added that by the end of the project’s implementation, India will have half a million Wi-Fi hotspots, which will be a game changer for the country.
She said the DoT has had a series of meetings with telcos for more than a year now, and has been asking the operators to undertake immediate measures to improve call quality, including setting up additional mobile towers across the country, to which companies have started erecting towers and in-building solutions too.
“The service providers had made commitments on improving the infrastructure; call drop has an impact on consumers,” Sundararajan said.
Under TRAI’s latest Quality of Service formula, telecom operators may face a maximum penalty of ₹10 lakh for call drops, which will be measured at mobile tower level instead of telecom circle level.
The new call drop rules came into force from October 1, and the December quarter will see the first instance of reporting under the new formula.