Earlier this week we reported that the call drop situation in the country has been improving after intervention by the government. But the progress has still not been up to the mark and this is a matter of serious concern. The government has now for the sake of fast tracking the issue, asked TRAI to impose a penalty on operators who are found guilty of not adhering to remedial measures for their network towers.
"The central government is very much serious on the call drop issue, right from the beginning. Inquiry is going on for the last five to six months on call drops. The telecom department is monitoring the situation across the entire country, and even BSNL is working to improve the situation. The TRAI has even been told to penalise the operator in case of call drop. The TRAI is working in this direction," Ravi shankar Prasad told media at Patna in Bihar.
As per a statement issued by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, "The TRAI has been requested to consider recommending incentives and disincentives for operators for call drops." The ministry has been working on this move for some time now to push telcos to act on controlling call drop rates in their circles.
The telecom minister, who is currently campaigning in Bihar for the upcoming state elections, said, "I want to say that with the effort of the central government in the last four to five months, the situation is about to improve, and will definitely improve. "As far as, Bihar is concerned, I would like to say that, I had earlier announced the setting of 1150 BTS (Base Trans-Receiver Station) of 2G, and today, I want to say that 620 have been set up and 120 BTS of 3G have been set up," Prasad added.
"The experts from the BSNL have come to Bihar several times in the last few months and have done a survey on what all things are needed to improve the situation. Even Airtel, Vodafone is optimizing and trying to improve the situation in different cities. Airtel is also setting up 10 BTS in Patna," he said. According to the latest TRAI report, the call drop problem during peak hours has almost doubled in the last one year.
