Mobile handsets must conform to BIS standards : Parliamentary panel

All consumer electronic items, including mobile phones both locally manufactured and imported, should strictly conform to BIS standards, a Parliamentary panel recommended.

“Considering the fact that the telecom equipment are vulnerable to security risk if not tested properly, the Department of Telecom in co-ordination with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology should ensure that BIS standards are strictly enforced”, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology said its report on “Issues related to quality of mobile services and reported call drops”.

The report observed that sub-standard mobile handsets were also responsible for poor quality of service including call drop in the country. In order to ensure continues improvement, there is a need to continuously engage with device eco-system for better voice and data experience getting pre-certification of devices for sensitivity and network performance. These devices are mainly imported from China and they tend to have poor quality of antenna and poor quality of radio equipment, report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, said.

Though the Telecom Engineering Centre has set a handset interface requirement, these requirements have not been enforced strictly. Despite the Ministry made it mandatory that all electronics products including mobile phone regardless of locally produced or imported, it is not enforced strictly, the panel said.

The panel headed by BJP MP Anurag Thakur made this recommendation following the complaints from some of the telecom service providers that poor handset quality also one of the reasons for increasing call drop problems.

Deccan Herald News Service