NEW DELHI:Ankur Malhotra travels nearly 17 km from his home to office in Central Delhi every day. Being a stock market analyst, his phone is always buzzing, except for five places where his phone goes silent.
By now, the 32-year-old has learnt the reason behind such ‘silences’, and it’s nothing but a clear case of call drops. While leaving his Chittaranjan Park home, Malhotra has identified the dark spots in Kalkaji, Lajpat Nagar, Sunder Nagar, India Gate and Pragati Maidan where he can’t make to take calls. While Malhotra may have been a victim of no-network at only specific places, many Delhi residents consistently complain of severe call drops across the city.
The story is similar in the Supreme Court premises. To make it technologically advanced, a wi-fi zone has been set up on the premises where lawyers and litigants can access the internet, but none can make or take any phone calls as there is no signal.
Surprising it may be sound, but the Supreme Court is perhaps the worst victim of call drops in Delhi. Not just the aam janta, be it the policymakers or the parliamentarians—all have faced tough times accessing their mobile phones. With jammers and other instruments put up to ensure maximum security, the important areas like the North Block, South Block, Vigyan Bhawan, Shashtri Bhawan, CBI Headquarters and Delhi Secretariat are also ‘out of bounds’ for the mobile phone users.
In the last few years, the problem of call drop has been an area of concern for the Union Government and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). With millions of mobile phone users going through tough times due to regular call drop issues, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked the telecom operators to look into the issue.
The Sunday Standard has learnt that the areas like Kalkaji, Chittaranjan Park H-Block, Lajpat Nagar Part-1, Sunder Nagar main road stretch, Hauz Khas, Uttam Nagar, Sarita Vihar, Mahavir Enclave, Rajeev Chowk, Chandni Chowk, Subhash Nagar, Tilak Nagar are the areas worst affected by the call drops.
And with the time, things are only getting worse.
But what is leading to such a big problem? The sources, however, blame it on the telecom operators for failing to develop their infrastructure. As telecom operators began penetrating, mobile teledensity increased from 1.2 in March 1999, to 77.27 in March 2015. The 12 telecom operators, including the government-run BSNL, have aggressively ramped up presence adding millions of subscribers from even the remotest locations. But while building their business, the telecom companies haven’t beefed up infrastructure in tandem to support the rising traffic.
The operators, on the other hand, claim that lack of spectrum and resistance of various resident welfare associations against installation of mobile towers are the main reasons behind the rapid increase in call drop rates.
The three municipal corporations in Delhi have removed nearly 341 mobile towers and have issued show-cause notices to 1,000 illegal structures. The sticking point seems to be the fees demanded by the corporations, which is Rs 5 lakh per tower. The operators find it quite unreasonable.
To address the issue of setting up towers, the Central Government has also given in-principal approval to operators for setting up mobile towers in government buildings. Considering the enormity of the situation, TRAI has come out with a consultation paper,“Compensation to customers on the event of dropped calls”. It suggested that every time there is a call drop, the customers will not be charged for it, and may even get compensated with extra talk time or money in their account.
The Department of Telecommunications did not buy operators’ excuse of lack of spectrum for not providing basic quality service to its subscribers. Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad earlier said that operators need to upgrade their basic infrastructure.
The government put the highest amount of spectrum to auction in March, some of which remained unsold. He also made it clear that the argument given by the operators that not enough spectrum was available with them didn’t hold substance.
