DoT calls meet with telcos to discuss service quality

The telecom department will hold a meeting with mobile operators this month to discuss several issues like quality of service, a top official said on November 15.

"Quality of service is a big concern. We will meet telecom service providers this month to discuss this and several other issues like fibre first, digitalisation," Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham event.

She said that the department has submitted 'Fibre First Initiative' to the Cabinet Secretary on which committee of secretaries will deliberate in coming days.

The fibre first initiative aims to take fibre to the home, to enterprises and to key development institutions in Tier I, II and III towns and to rural clusters to improve telecom networks.

An independent drive test (IDT) report published by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on November 15 found that all telecom operators, except Reliance Jio, failed to meet call drop benchmark in drive test conducted by sector regulator Trai on different highway and rail routes.

According to the quality of service rules, not more than 2 percent of total calls in a telecom circle on a network should automatically get disconnected.

The highways between Asansol to Gaya, Digha to Asansol, Gaya to Danapur, Bengaluru to Murdeshwar, Raipur to Jagdalpur, Dehradun to Nainital, Mount Abu to Jaipur and Sri Nagar to Leh were covered in the test.

Railway routes between Allahabad to Gorakhpur, Delhi to Mumbai and Jabalpur to Singrauli were covered.

Trai Chairman RS Sharma said that the test in presence of telecom operators representatives have been conducted by in over 100 cities, highways and railway routes.

"We check connectivity status in these test. We are hopeful that after these result, telecom operators who could not meet benchmark will make effort to improve their infrastructure. Objective of IDT is not to impose any regulatory punishment on service providers but to bring in transparency in network. This should be seen as mode of penalising operators," Sharma said.