Telcos invest only 13% in infra: Secy

Hitting out at the telecom firms for not investing adequately in infrastructure, leading to rising call drops, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Secretary Rakesh Garg said most of the investment by telcos are directed towards acquiring spectrum. He said the telecom companies invest only a paltry 13 per cent in setting up infrastructure.

According to telcos, Rs 1.34 lakh crore was invested in the telecom sector 2014-15. "They (telcos) have not taken adequate action by which this (call drops) problem could have been resolved... They cannot escape the responsibility of meeting standards as it is their basic service obligation. The call drop problem has increased in the past seven months and it has nothing to do with closing down of tower sites," said Garg.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) guidelines, the call drop rate should not be more than two per cent on an average in the whole service area and three per cent in individual areas. These standards were not met in some areas, Garg noted.

Trai had conducted a survey in Delhi and Mumbai in June and found that in some areas, the call rates are as high as 17 per cent. On Monday, all telecom players met the DoT secretary and asked for a national tower policy. The telcos also demanded telecom services and infrastructure to be declared essential services.

In 2014-15 alone, the telecom sector committed Rs 1,34,000 crore towards development of networks. Additionally, Rs 24,000 crore has been spent by incumbent operators on capital equipment in 2014-15. Many telcos are slow in making investments related to equipment for 2G services, which is leading to call drops. If a company plans to come out with LTE, it will make less investment in 2G and 3G infrastructure.

Telcos have allocated more bandwidth to data than voice, Garg said, adding voice should get priority and operators need to optimise networks for handling voice and data traffic efficiently.

An in-principle agreement between the DoT and the urban development ministry has been reached where the telecom operators will be allowed to set up towers on government buildings by paying a fee. The DoT has also written to Trai to suggest a disincentive mechanism for call drops for players. It has also asked Trai to look into various tariff plans, which incentivise call drops for telecom operators.