Telcos Deny Any Rise In Call Drops

Phone operators have rejected recent criticism by the telecom regulator about a decline in quality of mobile services and an increase in call drops. They said telcos such as Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, which were the worst hit by the Supreme Court’s October 2019 verdict on adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues, had reduced network spends but they did not compromise on maintaining the requisite quality of service (QoS) parameters mandated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

“AGR and related financial constraints of some operators may have led to some deferment of capital investment in networks, but this would not be at the expense of maintaining QoS parameters mandated by Trai,” Rajan Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), told ET. The COAI represents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Mathews, in turn, said that while there “may be some voice or data quality issues” in certain areas, “COAI does not believe there has been an overall nationwide degradation of service quality across all operators, which would have otherwise been picked up by Trai as part of its oversight.” He said Trai’s most recent report on QoS for the quarter ended September 2019 showed “most network failures were in Jammu & Kashmir.”

COAI’s Mathews said the recent tariff hikes by top three telcos led to an overall reduction in voice and data consumption levels, lowering the overall network load. ET’s queries emailed to Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Jio did not elicit any response till press time.

―Business Telegraph