Airtel, Aircel fail call drop test in Thiruvananthapuram

Most telecom operators except Airtel, Aircel and Tata Teleservices made the grade on the call drop test conducted by sector regulator Trai in Thiruvananthapuram in June.
"All operators have met the call set up success rate whereas 75 per cent of the networks are meeting call drop rate threshold," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in the network drive test report that was released today.
The tolerance limit for call drops is 2 per cent, which means at least 98 per cent of all calls made from a telecom network in a quarter should not get automatically disconnected.
The test was conducted in 12 cities in May-June, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bhopal. In Kanpur and Lucknow, most telecom operators except BSNL and Reliance Communications have been found compliant.

"Aircel 2G, Airtel 2G, DoCoMo 2G and Aircel 3G are not meeting the call drop rate benchmark of 2 per cent (in Thiruvananthapuram)," the report said.
Besides, Aircel, BSNL, DoCoMo (Tata Teleservices) and Reliance Communications were found using higher value of radio link timeout (RLT) parameter in the city, which is alleged to be a call drop masking technology.
"BSNL fails to meet the call drop rate benchmark of 2 per cent if RLT of more than 40 is considered. Call drop rate for Aircel and DoCoMo also increased," the report said.