Vodafone blames lack of spectrum for call drops

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today used a meeting with Vodafone Group chief executive Vittorio Colao to bring up the issue of dropped calls, which seems to be exercising the government in exclusion to other telecom related issues like abysmal broadband speeds.

"I very firmly told him, call drops need to be addressed and I want Vodafone to play a very proactive role.

"Consumers are concerned and we are also concerned, and this is a priority issue and I mentioned in particular Delhi, Eastern UP, Bihar and Mumbai," Prasad said in Delhi.

Colao, chief of the UK-based firm that is India's second largest mobile operator, told the minister that the situation would improve in a month's time, but also blamed the lack of spectrum. He said the issue is related to operational conditions in the country.

"I am really sorry about the fact that there are (call) drops in India at the level where we would not like them to be. It's linked to the amount of spectrum that we have, it's linked to the ease of getting permits, right of ways. We are working positively with DoT," Colao told reporters  after the meeting.

Prasad said, "On the call drop issue, I spoke to the boss of Vodafone, and Rakesh Garg (telecom secretary) has already talked to all the owners.

"Weekly monitoring is going on and the latest which I got was that about 14,000 more towers need to be fixed," he said.. The government had earlier said that a total of 34,460 mobile sites were found to be defective, out of which 16,962 were fixed in the third week of September.

The minister said that Colao was happy on the spectrum sharing and trading guidelines and complemented the government for the initiative on the issue of radiation.

The Vodafone boss wants spectrum to be made available in bigger blocks and the minister assured him that the matter will be looked into.