Telecom, tower companies responsible for deteriorating services: ETTelecom poll

NEW DELHI: Telecom service providers and tower companies are primarily responsible for the deteriorating quality of services, including call drops, while setting up base stations on government and defence premises could significantly improve the situation, an ETTelecom poll revealed.

In a week-long survey, 69% of the respondents in a poll conducted on the ETTelecom.com website were of the view that mobile service operators and telecom tower companies were responsible for growing instances of call drops and worsening quality of service.

The current situation – where most calls on any network aren’t completed in one go mainly in Delhi and Mumbai — has evoked a sharp response from the highest seats of power in the country. At a recent Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley came down heavily on telcos for rising call drops and backed the telecom department’s move on ‘punitive measures’ to be taken against erring companies.

While the government has found the primary cause of call drops to be the reluctance of operators to optimise their networks and their tendency to set aside voice for higher priced data usage, the industry maintains that the main reason is the difficulty in installing more towers to service customers.

Telcos, led by lobby groups such as the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India and the Cellular Operators Association of India and telecom tower operators represented by TAIPA blame state governments, local bodies and resident welfare associations for curtailing telecom infrastructure expansion due to hefty right-of-way charges and unfounded fears of health hazards out of electromagnetic field radiation from cell sites.

The survey showed 19% believe state governments and local municipalities are accountable for taking restrictive measures that hurt call quality, while 12% blame citizens and resident groups.



While 54% of respondents were of the view that cellphone towers at government and defence sites would improve the quality of service, 37 per cent felt telcos need to invest more resources to tackle network issues that have led to the poor state of service quality. On their part, the DoT and various telecom industry groups have cited World Health Organization studies to tell consumers that no health-related issues have ever been proved clinically and non-ionizing radiation from towers have no impact on wellbeing. WHO is currently conducting a health risk assessment of radiofrequency radiation and the new findings are expected to come out by the end of 2015.




Last week, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu directed officials to allow telecom towers on governmentowned buildings.

There are close to 550,000 mobile towers in India and industry analysts estimate another 100,000 such sites would be required over the next one to two years to cater to surging data usage, apart from voice services.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has floated a consultation paper on compensation to consumers for dropped calls and is also seeking operational details of telcos. The regulator is also conducting fresh ‘drive tests’ across India over the next fortnight to check whether mobile operators are doing their bit to reduce call drops. A drive test is typically in a moving vehicle loaded with gear to continuously make cellphone calls to verify if mobile operators meet networkrelated benchmarks.

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