“The meeting will be overseen by telecom secretary K Rajaraman,” an official told ET. It may also be shifted to the first week of January in case officials of DoT or executives of telecom operators are unavailable due to year-end holidays.
Private telcos Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea did not respond to ET’s emails seeking comment.
There has been an increase in complaints about call drops and call failures, particularly as mobile operators shift to 5G. As per officials, the department has been deliberating the issue internally and after a meeting on December 23, it was decided that the operators should be called to discuss the issue. Both DoT and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) are concerned at the rising service quality issues. Quality of service (QoS) is the mandate of the sector regulator.
Currently, the QoS parameters are analyzed for telecom circles and not on district-wise or state-wise. Data around telecom sites are being reported to the regulator, but not about cloud servers, etc. Telecom operators have called the current phase a temporary phenomenon, which, according to them, will improve in a month or so as handsets synchronize with 5G networks.
According to the industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), telcos are continuing to invest on enhancing the network experience for over a billion mobile users in India.
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