1183 complaints against telcos in 2014 for call drops & poor connectivity: Govt

647 complaints have been registered till June this year; Airtel tops the list

The highest number of complaints received by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) this year (till June) came from Airtel subscribers, while for the whole of 2014, Vodafone customers complained the most about poor network connectivity and call drops.

Trai received 1,183 complaints against all telecom players in 2014, while 647 complaints were registered till June this year. These figures were revealed by Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for communications and information technology, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

Till June this year, Trai received 211 complaints against Airtel, 169 against Vodafone, and 81 against Reliance Communications. For 2014, Trai received 279 against Vodafone, 249 against Airtel, and 238 complaints against Reliance Communications.

Apart from Trai, the Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) Cells, a unit of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), also received a number of complaints. This unit received 39 complaints against Airtel in 2014, followed by Vodafone and Reliance at 38 each. In all, it received 161 complaints against all telecom players.

Till June this year, the TERM Cells got 10 complaints against Airtel, six against Reliance and five complaints against Vodafone. The total number of complaints stood at 40 against telcos for the first six months of this year.

The minister noted that DoT and the urban development ministry have agreed in-principle to permit installation of mobile towers at government buildings, which will help reduce call drops.

A meeting was held on July 22 between the DoT and Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) on the issue. “It has been in-principle agreed that MoUD shall permit installation of mobile towers/in-building solutions in government buildings under their control subject to structural safety and payment of appropriate licence fee by the telecom service providers,” said Prasad.

“While the operators need to optimise and reinforce their networks, extensive campaign on radiation issue is dissuading the people from allowing towers to be installed,” he said.

The DoT had convened meetings with telecom operators in April as well as the second week of July on the call drops issue. The operators were asked to take immediate steps to address the problem by radio frequency optimisation, installation of new sites, and in-building solutions.

Besides, the DoT asked TERM Cells to take up special audit to assess the coverage and quality of service of all operators in the metros.