No ‘ease of doing business’ in telecom sector: COAI

Telecom operators body COAI said on Friday it does not see ‘ease of doing business’ in the sector as rules framed by the Centre are not getting implemented at local level for network roll-out.

“Law of the land should work as indicated, but ease of business is not there when we get down to local levels,” COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews told reporters while discussing issues around call drops.

He said the municipal bodies and panchayats are not following the rules framed by the Centre and obstruct rolling out of telecom network.

During the BRICS summit 2016 held in Goa, the telecom minister, secretary and other top officials from Centre went to the state to get mobile towers installed to handle traffic load but still telecom companies failed to get adequate permission from local bodies, to invest ~740 billion in one year to Mathews said. address the problem. We are making

“In Bangalore, we are asked to pay best effort to check call drops,” price equivalent to the market for digging Mathews said. an area for laying optical fibre He said telecom networks are not cable. The amount of money demanded the only factor responsible for call drops is so huge that it leaves no business and the regulations do not consider other case for us,” Mathews said. factors. According to the COAI, call

He said some states have aligned drops may occur because of interference their policy for rolling out telecom networks of signals, congestion on cell sites, with that of the Centre, but there weather conditions, faulty handsets and is problem in other states. call transfer from one tower to the

As per a presentation by the COAI, another. It said that most of the factors Odisha, Haryana and Rajasthan have on customer side have not been considered notified policy as per the rules notified under Trai regulations. by the Department of Telecom and Mathews said that problem of call expect Uttar Pradesh and Assam to drop is more in data based networks soon notify them. like voice over LTE (VoLTE) than the

“Telecom operators have been technology used for 2G and 3G. He said investing huge amount to prevent call the average spectrum holding, required drops. In last 12 months, telecom companies for transmitting mobile signals, is very have invested ~346 billion to low in India and operators can buy instal 3,46,778 base stations. Just two additional spectrum only if it is reasonably operators, Airtel and Jio have committed priced.