Telecom firms to invest Rs 74,000 cr to address call drops issue

The Centre has said that Indian telecom operators have promised to invest Rs 74,000 crore to upgrade their infrastructure by the end of next fiscal to address the call drops issue.

"Bharti Airtel said that they have invested Rs 16,000 crore on infrastructure and will be spending another Rs 24,000 crore. Reliance Jio has said that they will invest Rs 50,000 crore in installing 1 lakh towers in coming fiscal," Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told reporters after meeting senior officials of telecom companies.

In the meeting convened to discuss the call drops issue, she said, Idea Cellular and Vodafone too committed to increase mobile towers in their network.

The DoT has been holding the meeting with the telecom firms to address the issue as the government received public wrath for not addressing the issue.

In the meeting, the secretary said telecom firms have raised the issue of non-availability of sites for installing mobile towers along with some other problems.

Though problems of call drops have stabilised in most of the areas, issues like fading of voice calls have increased due to various reasons, including some mobile phones not complying with required certification norms.

"Telecom operators have raised the issue of illegal repeaters installed in networks (which) are creating interference and affecting call quality. We will look into enforcing rules more stringently," Sundararajan said.

The vigilance arm of the Department of Telecom (DoT) will look into issues of non-compliance raised by mobile service providers.

She said telecom operators have said that in India around 400 callers use a mobile tower during same time while in China and other countries this average is in the range of 200-300. "This issue is being discussed with equipment makers," she added.