Call Drops reduced 7% in 3 Months: DOT

According to the new survey by Department of Telecom (DOT), about 60 percent subscribers have reported experiencing frequent call drops out of 3.56 lakh subscribers.

The survey says that from the feedback it has been observed that the complaint is mostly indoors. The feedback is shared with the TSPs to take corrective action in a time-bound manner and submit the action taken report (ATR) to DoT Task Force every fortnight.

The Government has recently launched an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) in order to obtain direct feedback from subscribers about Quality of Mobile Services and it is rolled out in all States.

The survey said that since its launch, the IVRS system has made 26.97 lakh calls to subscribers of all Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) across the country, out of which 3.56 lakh subscribers (about 13 percent) participated in the survey. Remaining 87 percent subscribers, who did not participate, were either not willing or did not have the problem of frequent call drops.

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DOT added the results obtained through the IVRS platform and follow up efforts of DoT & TSPs are quite encouraging. The call drops reported by subscribers have dropped from 64 percent in Dec-2016 to 57 percent at the end of Mar-2017, a drop of nearly 7 percent in 3 months.

In addition, the said initiatives of the Government have facilitated TSPs to identify black spots and plan new sites/ infrastructure to improve their services. TSPs have planned 987 new sites/boosters out of which 109 have been already installed and commissioned (Airtel-11, Idea-29, Reliance Jio - 69).

TSPs contact each subscriber, who has reported frequent call drops, through telephonic calls and SMS in English and local languages to collect further details required for resolution of the complaint.