Telecom Services Declining: User Survey

About 27% of users said they felt the quality of telecom services has deteriorated in the past three months, according to a Local Circles survey in which 24,000 participants cast 53,000 votes

. “…lower tariffs do not guarantee good call quality and many consumers have reported issues with their call clarity, voice breaks and call drops. In the past three months, many consumers have complained that many of their calls do not connect even on multiple tries,” said Sachin Taparia, co-founder of the online community network.

Replying to a query, 21% of the nearly 8,000 respondents across 200 districts in India said that 50% of their mobile calls either drop or have connection issue, while 35% said 20-50% of their calls have issues, 33% said up to 20% of their calls have connection issues whereas only 11% said they do not face any issues.

In response to the a question, 20% citizens said that while talking on the phone when they have a bad connection the call takes more than a minute to drop. 31% said it drops after 30-60 seconds, 21% said it drops within 30 seconds whereas 28% said it does not drop automatically at all.

When asked how often are they forced to make a data/wifi call because they are unable to connect via regular mobile networks, 20% respondents said they do it more than 20% of the times, while 27% said they do it 5-20% of the times and 26% do it less than 5% of the times. About 27% respondents said their mobile calls always go through.

Further, as per the survey, 30% respondents, who were Vodafone users, said that the situation with call connects and call drops had significantly deteriorated, while 27% said that it was the same as before.

Likewise, 38% Airtel users surveyed had experienced a major increase in issues with call connects and call drops in the past three months, while 32% said the issues were same as before. For Reliance Jio and Idea, 27% and 15% respondents, respectively said call connects had become difficult and call drops had increased. – The Hindu