Clear up the lines, Trai tells telcos

Amid a cutthroat race for acquiring "lifetime subscribers" among cellular operators, the telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai) today warned operators of a possible crisis caused by network congestion and asked them to take urgent corrective measures.

"Every month congestion is rising... If it continues, in the next few months a situation may arise where it will be difficult to get through a call," Trai Secretary Rajinder Singh said.

According to the latest report on congestion for October-November, Trai said at over 400 points of interconnection the level of congestion is more than the benchmark of less than 0.5 per cent.

Asked whether congestion was between private operators and state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited only, Trai said categorically that congestion was everywhere, even between two private operators.

Trai had earlier issued a directive to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to take corrective measures to meet the quality parameters latest by December 31, 2005 to which the COAI had objected.

Trai had said operators had not taken enough measures like deploying more number of cell sites and using hi-tech antennas while admitting that congestion was partly due to interconnection between operators but failure on the part of service providers was the mainly responsible.

"The points of interconnection congestion in the network is on account of inadequate junctions between the two networks and this leads to frequent blocking of calls and the consequent poor quality of services to the subscribers," Trai said in a statement.

The benchmark notified by Trai in the quality of service (QoS) regulation in July 2005 stands at less than 0.5 per cent meaning thereby that out of 200 call between two operators only one call should face congestion problem.

"The result of the monitoring reveals that in a number of areas, the degree of congestion between the operators is alarming. In a number of cities, the level of congestion is far more than the benchmark and the number of such places are increasing," it added.

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WRONG NUMBER

In Oct-Nov, congestion at over 400 points of interconnection was more than the benchmark of less than 0.5 per cent.

Trai had asked Cellular Operators Association of India to take corrective measures to meet the quality parameters latest by December 31, 2005 to which COAI had objected.

Operators had not taken enough measures like deploying more number of cell sites and using hi-tech antennas, Trai had said