Trai urges telecom companies to add towers, bolster 2G networks

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has urged the telecom operators to add towers on a war footing and reinforce existing 2G networks and not merely focus on 3G to improve the overall mobile coverage.

Trai in its plea said there is an urgent need to address challenges posed by the arbitrary sealing of mobile towers by municipal authorities in urban areas.

The sector regulator suggested a clutch of measures at the operator-end to reduce call drops, including dynamic channel allocation, multiple call routing and optimized resource management. It also urged telcos to deploy signal boosters at user premises to check the problem.

Analysing the call drops jinx, the sector regulator said the surge in "call handovers", triggered by the sharp increase in demand for cellular services, had increased the probability of dropped phone calls in urban zones.

Some key reasons behind the rising incidence of call drops, it said, were flawed network configuration and synchronization, inadequate mobile signal strength and transmission problems.

Last month, the telecom regulator has ordered telcos to compensate consumers Re 1 for every call dropped on their networks, subject to a cap of three a day, starting January 1, 2016, a move that promises to bring relief to angry mobile phone users.