Mobile phone operators have been warned by the DoT (Department of Telecommunications) not to blame call drops on lack of new towers and removal of the old ones. The authority asked the Telcos to instead “optimise” their bandwidth network so as to regularly improvise services.
Telecom secretary Rakesh Garg told in a meeting on Monday that the general public are unhappy with the call drops spread across the entire day in Metro cities and also the issues that exists in billing. He further added that “The TSPs were told about the perception of the public that such call drops are deliberate attempts by the TSPs to have multiple charging and consequent commercial gain”
Mr Garg also shed some light on how billing by the TSPs was not completely transparent and also pointed out at frequent changes in packages without informing the customer. He further said that in the case of international roaming carriers fail to inform the customers about the tariffs for various types of usages including data download which will often leave the customers with hefty bill to foot.
Also read: Telecom Operators Paged Over Excess Billing, Call Drops
Mobile operators had earlier put the blame on the lack of cellphone towers and the fact that people are shying away from installing towers on their sites owing to the fear associated with Electromagnetic radiation. The mobile operators also said that getting permission from the local bodies for repair of cables is being delayed and this is again proving to be a bottleneck.
DoT however emphasised that the carriers cannot use these reasons to hide the fact that they have not been able to render prompt services to the public. The carriers on the other hand agreed to look after the billing complaints on priority and try to come up with a more transparent billing system and inform the customers of excess charges or any change in the billing.
