New Delhi, Feb. 5: The telecom regulator has said operators have repeatedly failed its tests on the quality of voice calls, but the industry has refuted the findings.
Mobile service providers, including Airtel, Vodafone and state-run MTNL, have failed regulator Trai's tests conducted to check the quality of voice calls as part of the government's efforts to rein in call drops.
Test reports by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said that none of the operators in Mumbai, Pune and Bhubaneswar showed a reduction in call drops.
According to Trai's benchmark, not more than 2 per cent of the calls on an operator's network should get automatically disconnected. The regulator conducted tests for both 2G and 3G networks.
Telecom operators, however, questioned the tests. Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have asked Trai not to publish the report as they claimed there was a huge variation between tests conducted by the regulator and their own reassessment.
Trai has mandated that operators compensate a subscriber Re 1 per dropped call. However, industry players have refused to play ball in the absence of any court order.
"According to the drive test report, none of the operators were meeting the prescribed benchmark," Trai said.
The regulator had conducted drive tests during December-January on selected routes of seven cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Bhubaneswar and Indore - and shared the findings with the operators.
MTNL was the worst performer in Mumbai and Delhi. Call drops on MTNL's 3G network were at 15.58 per cent in Mumbai and 23.65 per cent in Delhi.
In Pune, call drop on Tata's 3G network was as high as 42.93 per cent, followed by Idea Cellular at 20.96 per cent. Idea's 2G network in Pune was worst with 18.97 per cent call drop.
In Bhubaneswar, where all operators failed tests, maximum call drop was witnessed on Aircel's 3G network and on R-Com's 2G CDMA network.
Only the national capital showed an improvement in service quality with Airtel's both 2G and 3G network and 3G networks of Idea and Vodafone falling in line with Trai's call drop benchmark.
