Chandigarh, October 15
Telecom subscribers across board will have to suffer frequent call drops and congestion on network because of failure on part of most cellular companies to take adequate maintenance measures to deal with the increased traffic during this festival season.
Though call drops have been a nagging problem for cellular subscribers in the region, the incidence has gone up tremendously over the past couple of days. The increase in cellular traffic, especially at the market places, has led to a huge congestion in cellular traffic, in turn leading to frequent call drops. Sources in the telecom industry say that because of economic considerations, none of the cellular operators are willing to plan the network in a way that the excess congestion on their network can be routed through another operators’ network. This is further aggravating the problem.
Anil Prakash, president of the Telecom Users Group, said most cellular operators are unwilling to take a cut in their revenue by diverting the calls through alternate routes. “They want to pocket all three pockets of tariff - from the point of origination, carrying forward and point of termination. When the network is not properly covered it leads to call drops,” he said.
Also, it is a fact that most of the telecom operators have not been investing in infrastructure, even as they have ensured that their subscriber base increases by leaps and bounds. The latest report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on October 1, too, indicts the cellular operators for deterioration in performance, especially in the call drop rate. The report also mentions that the subscriber base across India increased from 429.72 million in March 2009 to 464.82 million in June 2009, with the overall tele-density in the country reaching to 39.86 as on June 30, 2009.
Randhir Verma, president of Chandigarh Telecom Subscribers Association, said while around 1.5 lakh subscribers are added in the Punjab circle every month, approximately 1.75 lakh subscribers are added in the Haryana circle during the same period. “But with no significant increase in
infrastructure (radio base stations or RBS) vis-a-vis the customer base, consumers continue to face the problem of call drops everywhere.
The state governments have failed to come up with a policy with regards to erection of telecom towers, which has also ensured that cellular infrastructure in the region has not kept pace with the growing number of subscribers in the region, thus aggravating the problem of call drops,” he said.
