Except Airtel, all telecom companies fail call drop test in Ahmedabad: Trai

All telecom operators except Bharti Airtel failed to meet the call drop benchmark in Ahmedabad, as per telecom regulator Trai's sample drive test.

However, the situation was much better in two major cities of Uttar Pradesh -- Lucknow and Kanpur -- as most telecom operators met the benchmark.

"Only Airtel 2G met the call drop rate benchmark of less than or equal to 2 per cent in 2G networks (in Ahmedabad). Most of the operators failed to meet the benchmark by a wide margin," the drive test report released by Trai today said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) found that other than Airtel 2G and 3G and Vodafone 2G, most of the operators have call drop rate of over 3 per cent.

"Idea 2G and 3G and BSNL 3G have call drop rates in the range of above 10 per cent. These are exceptionally high and it clearly indicate for urgent need of improvement in order to deliver reasonable levels of services," Trai said.

The regulator said that vast gap between the good performance of Airtel and Vodafone 2G and the bad performance of other operators clearly shows that it is possible for them to offer much better quality of service.

The call drop test result in Lucknow and Kanpur were in contrast to most of the cities in the country.

"Lucknow is one of the better performing Indian cities as majority of the operators are meeting the call drop rate benchmark of 2 per cent," Trai said.

Out of 14 networks tested, only two networks, BSNL 2G and Reliance CDMA, did not meet the required benchmark.

The regulator also found few operators using alleged call drop masking technology in Lucknow. In Kanpur, the regulator found that majority of operators are meeting the benchmark.

Out of 14 networks tested, only three did not meet the standards -- BSNL 2G and 3G, and Reliance CDMA.

Trai conducted call drop test in 12 cities between May 3 - June 3, which included Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Trivandrum, Ranchi, Sikkim and Hyderabad. The regulator has released test reports of some cities.