Call drops to reduce within a month, telcos promise govt

India’s call drop woes may soon be coming to an end with the heads of various telecom operators assuring the government they will resolve the problem within the span of a month. However, the companies have not clarified what steps they are taking to achieve this goal.

The CEO’s involved in the assertion include the likes of Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel), Anil Ambani (Reliance Communications), and Kumar Mangalam Birla (Idea Cellular). They spoke to Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg on the matter, vowing to take positive action and demonstrate a distinct improvement in the quality of calls within 30 to 45 days.



The executives will instruct their managers to do all that is necessary in order to deal with call drops. According to Hindustan Times, they now recognize the loss of revenue their companies have suffered due to the widespread problem and the inconvenience it has caused to the masses. Garg thinks the measures taken by the providers will result in better voice quality in the next few days.
He went on to claim that the government has fulfilled all the requests made by the network operators. He hopes this will lead to a decrease in call drops. The occurrence of the problem during peak hours has risen two-fold in the space of a year. The escalation prompted Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to request Garg to personally call the heads of companies and ask for their direct involvement in the issue.


Garg said the CEO’s he spoke with claimed that roughly 10000 mobile towers have been taken down. However, they acknowledged the 70 – 80 sites which were put up in the same period of time. As per data submitted by operators, there were 18.86 lakh towers in the country as of August 30 2015, out of which 35654 had a call drop rate of more than 3%.