Giving this information in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today, Shri Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, said that as per the performance monitoring report for cellular mobile telephone services submitted by service providers for the quarter ending September, 2013 the service providers are generally complying with the benchmarks for the various quality of service parameters, except for the parameter “Percentage of Calls answered by the Operators (voice to voice) within 60 seconds”.
The major reasons for non compliance with the benchmark for the above parameter viz. >= 90% are high manpower attrition and delay in hiring, outsourcing issues and unexpected increasing call volumes.
As regards few cases of non compliance with the benchmarks for network related parameters, the major reasons are electricity problems, site acquisition problems, site access problems in remote and rural areas and other local problems.
Apart from this, though the subject matter pertains to TRAI, the complaints received in DoT and its field units, also include such type of complaints.
Category wise break-up of these complaints on the basis of any specific nature of complaint including “poor network connectivity” etc is not being maintained.
Shri Deora also informed the House that as per the license conditions for cellular mobile telephone service the service providers are required to provide coverage only in 90% of the district headquarter.
The quality of service will be affected in such places where there is insufficient coverage. The quality of service in an area where coverage is there could also be affected due to heavy traffic.
TRAI monitors the performance of service providers to assess the performance of cells having more than 3% call drop through the parameter – “Worst affected cells having more than 3% Traffic Channel (TCH) drop (call drop) rate (benchmark <=3%)”. As per the performance monitoring report for the quarter ending September, 2013 the service providers are generally complying with the benchmark.
Expansion of network by telecom operators beyond their roll out obligations is done based on their techno-commercial interests and Government has no role to play in this regard.
However, in respect of Telecom PSUs, it is submitted that BSNL has planned to augment 14.37 million GSM lines in its area of operation in all the four zones (East, West, North & South). MTNL has also proposed to expand its mobile network to further augment and improve coverage.
