Call drops more severe indoors: DOT survey

NEW DELHI: With a survey of Department of Telecommunications (DOT) presenting a gloomy picture on the call drop situation, it seems that mobile users will have to grapple with the connectivity problem for some longer time. According to the latest DOT survey, the issue of call drops is more severe indoors.

The survey has been conducted on over 2.2 lakh mobile phone subscribers by the telecom department. “About 2,20,935 subscribers participated in the survey. From the feedback it has been observed that the problem of call drops is more severe indoors,” the DOT said in a statement on Thursday.

The data was collated through the Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) system which was launched in a few places last December and was extended to major parts of the country by March-end. Through this system, subscribers received an IVRS call from short code and were asked a few questions on the call drop problem.

According to the statement, since the launch of the IVRS system, over 16 lakh calls have been made to subscribers of all service providers across the country.

“The feedback is shared with the Telecom Service Providers (TSPS) every week for taking action in a time-bound manner. The TSPS have set up an elaborate mechanism for using the IVRS feedback data sent by DOT,” the statement added.

The statement said that for the fortnight February 15 to 28, 2017, as many as 43,403 feedback cases were taken up for investigation by TSPS. “After telephonic calls and SMS to the subscribers to seek additional information on their call drop problem, 7,210 cases were identified for resolution,” the release added.

Finally, during the fortnight, 2467 cases were resolved through optimization, rectifying hardware/power problems, through field visits. A total of 9,328 cases have been resolved through this initiative since the launch of IVRS. According to the data with the department, in addition to the above numbers some 5,529 cases which were not related to call drops but other issues such as related to data, roaming, billing, MNP, mobile devices etc., were also identified by the TSPS for taking necessary action.

Commenting on the contentious issue Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha had recently said that the department is looking into the matter and hopeful of getting it resolved very soon. The department has taken up the call drop issue seriously and accordingly directed all telecom service providers to find out a permanent solution to the issue, Sinha had said.