A major issue faced by the Indian masses in the mobile age is "Call Drops". This issue is now not only restricted to small towns and rural areas, but has emerged as a pan-India problem. Contradicting the circumstances, the service providers on the other hand, claim that the call drop rate is below the 2 per cent benchmark given by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).
Industry experts have sighted various reasons for such negative developments in the country. They are of the opinion that call drops happen because of inadequate coverage, quality of signal, including interference, network congestion and network failures.
It has also been pointed out that the call drops take place not only in trains, but also if someone is moving from one tower to another for coverage. What adds to the situation are the mobile towers being overloaded with calls. Some calls have to be dropped to accommodate the others.
The Indian consumers however suspect that this is a deliberate attempt by service providers to boost their call numbers. What triggers such thoughts amongst the consumers is the fact that there is no standard definition of a dropped call.
What consumers consider a disconnection may not qualify as such for the mobile operator. Operators, therefore, manage to stay on the right side of the rules.
In lieu of the present situation, the government of India plans to spend Rs 69,524 crore on various IT and Telecom projects under the Digital India Programme. However before taking any step, the authorities should first focus on defining the dropped call situation and then move towards a solution of having adequate number of mobile towers. Until then, the consumers should be compensated for the losses incurred by them.
The authorities could draw inspiration from their neighbouring countries to reimburse the consumers. To counter the situation, the service providers in other countries are offering a minute of free talk time for every dropped call. Indian service providers could also go back in history and replicate the offer once initiated by Bharti Airtel in the year 2004.
It offered money back to customers in Andhra Pradesh for dropped calls. Apart from these solutions, the Indian customers do not have much to lose with the payment per second cycle in India.
The operators in India need more spectrums to improve quality of service, as the mobile network is one of the key growth pillars supporting Digital India.
(Peter Chang is regional head - South Asia & country manager - Asus India)
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