Poor mobile network may be inflating your Ola and Uber bills

NEW DELHI: Your Ola and Uber fares may be inflated by a fifth because of poor mobile network, preliminary result sofa new government authorised study has found.

The app-based cab aggregators use GPS installed on the driver’s phone — and not a physical meter like in an auto — to compute the bill for a particular ride.

But due to patchy mobile network, the phone often connects to a tower that may be far away from the pick-up and drop-off points, creating a discrepancy in the fares. The survey was conducted in Delhi but such discrepancies might be a pan-India phenomenon as poor mobile connectivity is a problem across India. A recent survey by the International Center for Automotive Technology (ICAT), authorised by the Bureau of Indian Standards, found that app-based cab fares could vary as much as 56% from the actual bill. Over the course of the study, the discrepancy averaged out at 20%.

While this notionally means that cab fares could also be lower than the actual bill, most cases in the study found that a malfunctioning GPS caused a jump in the tariff.

“The distance measurement accuracy varied from 0% to 56% under different situations,” said the report. Both Ola and Uber refused to comment on the matter.

An ICAT official said: “Many a time, the network is lost when you are in the middle of the trip, or going through the defence areas, where jammers are installed.” The study monitored five routes in Delhi, the longest being 21 kilometres, and used a dozen different devices – procured by the aggregators.

“In some devices, the distance showed up as 28 km and in some as 22. It varied from device to device and network to network. We are planning to conduct an exhaustive research before coming to a conclusion,” the ICAT official added.

India is one of the world’s fastest-growing taxi markets and the two start-ups — The Indian Ola and the United States-based Uber — have been locked in a noholds-barred fight over the past year to gain control. Ola is the market leader with services in 34 cities but Uber is catching up fast.

But the breakneck pace of growth set by the cab aggregators has run into regulatory headwinds recently. In April, governments in Karnataka and Delhi banned surge pricing — a practice of increasing fares with rising demands. Two weeks ago, the Delhi high court told Ola and Uber that they cannot charge customers more than rates prescribed by the government. But the cab aggregators have resisted the move, instead commissioning ICAT to bolster the case for adopting GPS-based fare calculation by all cab companies.