As the issue of call-drop persists, the government will soon meet operators to get their views and also discuss ‘fibre first’ initiatives, a top official at Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said here on Friday.

“Call-drops are a big concern. We will meet the operators on this and discuss…we anyway have to discuss the issue of fibre first and digital readiness,” Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Telecom, told reporters here on the sidelines of an event.

According to a latest report by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), except for Reliance Jio, other telecom operators failed to meet call-drop benchmark in drive tests conducted on highways and rail routes.

The TRAI report said that while network performance of telcos differed on highways, none of them, except RJio, could meet call drop benchmark on the three rail routes covered under the test.

Test routes

According to the quality of service rules, not more than two per cent of total calls in a telecom circle on a network should automatically get disconnected. The highways covered in the test were Asansol-Gaya; Digha-Asansol; Gaya-Danapur; Bengaluru-Murdeshwar; Raipur-Jagdalpur; Dehradun-Nainital; Mount Abu-Jaipur and Sri Nagar-Leh.

Railway routes tested were Allahabad to Gorakhpur; Delhi to Mumbai and Jabalpur to Singrauli. Call drops are happening even though operators say they are investing in mobile towers and boosters in public buildings to improve the situation.

The government had met the industry on the same issues in January and directed the operators to fast track tower installations.

When asked how soon she will meet the telcos, Aruna Sundararajan said, “We will meet them this month”. She was speaking on the sidelines of Telecom India — ‘Propelling India to a trillion dollar digital economy Roadmap to National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) Implementation’, organised by Assocham and EY.

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