TRAI test drive result limited to only 600 km: COAI

A day after India`s telecom regulator said most service providers failed to meet the call drop rate threshold of less than 2% in the national capital region (NCR) during a recent test drive, industry stakeholders contended the results were limited to a route covering 600 km only.

"While the area of Delhi NCR is 46,208 square km, these results are limited to a route covering 600 km only. Hence the quality of service (QoS) results from the drive test are not strictly comparable with the standard QoS for Dropped Calls regularly published by TRAI for the entire service area," the Cellular Operators` Association of India (COAI) said in a statement here on Thursday.

The statement said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report showed that majority of the call drops happening in the four areas - Central Delhi, Dwarka and IGI Airport, Gurgaon and Manesar and Noida and Mayur Vihar.

"Given the limited coverage of these drive tests, the results show problems limited to the known problematic areas where the industry faces issues in obtaining cell sites. The TRAI report itself acknowledges that majority of the call drop instances are in these problematic locations. For example, the TRAI report states that for Airtel, 65% of the call drops are attributed to four areas of Connaught Place, Dwarka, Gurgaon and Noida. In case of Vodafone, 60% of the call drops have occurred in Delhi University and Noida," the statement added.

It further stated that the industry players in order to augment coverage and capacity, have put up over 2 lakh cell sites nationally in the past 15 months.