Telecom firms plan quarterly reports on spectrum usage

 Aiming to improve service quality, telecom firms may soon have to come up with quarterly reports on spectrum usage and the equipment they use.

In a bid to put an end to complaints regarding call drops and poor call quality, the Department of Telecom (DoT) is working on a system to ensure telecom firms should prepare a quarterly report about the usage of spectrum.

Earlier, the DoT had constituted a panel of official to study reasons and recommend suggestions following complaints received by the government about increasing call drops and poor call quality. Even telecom firms have blamed the shortage of spectrum for call drops.

The official panel suggested that the government must ensure that telecom companies use spectrum properly and fix accountability on those firms that fail to adhere to the government diktat.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently said that operators, with the availability of sufficient spectrum, must work towards improving quality of service and address the call drops issue. The minister also said that he will ask telecom regulator TRAI to look into the matter if consumers continue to raise concerns.

Though the TRAI has been tracking the quality of services offered by operators on a regular basis, the regulator has never asked for a spectrum audit till date. The DoT’s wireless planning and coordination wing, responsible for allocation of radio waves, has been saying that telecom firms were not using the spectrum optimally.