Telecom Minister wants to address Call Drop Issue

In a welcome news the Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad along with Telecom Secretary J S Deepak and BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava have decided to conduct a drive test in Delhi to directly monitor call drops.

While addressing an event hosted by BSNL Mr. Prasad told that, "I, (JS) Deepak and Anupam (Shrivastava) will go around in Delhi to monitor call drops".

Mr. Prasad was there to launch modern telephone service of BSNL. He further added that he was taking this initiative to work on ground and further mentioned that he would also want top BSNL officers to come out of their offices and work on the ground level.

Mr. Prasad has already conducted drive tests in Indore with the Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL. When Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had conducted such a drive test of call drops in the month of December and January, it was found that most of the telecom operators, including MTNL had failed random drive tests conducted.

TRAI which is a regulator had specifically conducted such a drive to check quality of network and services as part of its efforts to rein in call drop menace.

The TRAI report revealed that none of the telecom operators showed improvement in call drops in Mumbai, Pune and Bhubaneswar where the test drive was conducted.

When the test was conducted in Indore it was found by TRAI that Airtel, Vodafone, RRCom, CDMA and Tata CDMA all could comply with the call drop norms for 2G network but failed for other network.

Prasad sets tough target for BSNL:

Mr. Prasad has asked BSNL to achieve 1 crore customer base in financial year 2016-17. He was quoted to say that, "In around April, BSNL was selling 7-8 lakh sim (cards) and in January- March, BSNL started selling 20 lakh sim. I am told BSNL has 70 lakh customers. I would like to see this customer base to grow 1 crore net in 2016-17. I am even ready to sit and sell sims for BSNL".

He was further quoted to say that, "If BSNL can market its product with right strategy, I am sure we will see same kind of revolution in landline segment as we have seen in mobile telephony".

What BSNL needs to do:

Telecom Secretary JS Deepak mentioned that BSNL needs to utilise its maximum network capacity as it was only using 70 per cent of its network capacity while private telecom operators were using 90 per cent.

Mr. Prasad whereas was of the opinion that BSNL needs to communicate to masses about its services and work which it has not been doing.

Mr. Prasad was not happy with the fact that many people in India are still not aware of free nation-wide night calling service being offered by BSNL as it has not been communicated well to the masses.