Airtel, Vodafone have most congested networks, says Trai

NEW DELHI: GSM operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar have the most congested telecom networks, an analysis by Trai revealed. The regulator, which has been monitoring the traffic on a monthly basis, said the congestion levels in 129 places during the quarter ended September 2008 far exceeded the permissible limits. But this is still a climbdown. There were 526 highly congested areas in year 2006 and 134 in the June 2008 quarter.

Network congestion leads to call drops, deterioration in voice quality and is the primary reason that drives consumers to repeat calls.

The regulator evaluates the congestion levels at the points of interconnection (PoI) where the mobile traffic is exchanged between networks belonging to different operators. These levels signify the ease of communication across networks. The regulator has set a benchmark of less than 0.5%, which means that one out of 200 calls between two operators should encounter congestion problems.