Survey blames telcos, tower firms for dropped calls

Telecom service providers and tower companies are primarily responsible for the deteriorating quality of services, including call drops, and setting up base stations on government and defence premises could significantly improve the situation, an ETTelecom poll showed.

In a week-long survey, 69 per cent of the respondents in a poll conducted on the ETTelecom.com website were of the view that mobile service operators and telecom tower companies were responsible for growing instances of call drops and worsening quality of service.

The current situation - where calls on any network often aren't completed in one go mainly in Delhi and Mumbai - has evoked a sharp response from the highest seats of power in the country.

At a recent cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley came down heavily on telcos for rising call drops and backed the telecom department's move on 'punitive measures' to be taken against erring companies.

While the government has found the primary cause of call drops to be the reluctance of operators to optimise their networks and their tendency to set aside voice for higher priced data usage, the industry maintains that the main reason is the difficulty in installing more towers to service customers.

The survey showed 19 per cent believe state governments and local municipalities are accountable for taking restrictive measures that hurt call quality, while 12 per cent blame citizens and resident groups.

While 54 per cent of respondents were of the view that cellphone towers at government and defence sites would improve the quality of service, 37 per cent felt telcos need to invest more resources to tackle network issues that have led to the poor state of service quality.

On their part, the DoT and various telecom industry groups have cited World Health Organization studies to tell consumers that no health-related issues have ever been proved clinically, and non-ionizing radiation from towers have no impact on wellbeing.

WHO is currently conducting a health risk assessment of radiofrequency radiation and the new findings are expected to come out by the end of 2015.