TRAI’s call drop test on highway, rail routes: Jio shines while others fall short

According to a TRAI report, none of the telcos like Airtel, Vodafone Idea or BSNL could succeed to meet call drop benchmark in drive test conducted TRAI, PTI reports. The TRAI report recently stated that even as network performance of all these telcos differed on highways, all of them, except RJio, fell short of the benchmark set up by sector regulator TRAI for call drop test.

“Only RJio is meeting quality of service benchmark of drop call rate,” the report said.

According to the PTI report, as far as the quality of service rules is concerned, not more than 2 per cent of total calls in a telecom circle on a network should automatically get disconnected.

As reported by PTI, the TRAI call drop test covered the highways between Asansol to Gaya, Digha to Asansol, Gaya to Danapur, Bengaluru to Murdeshwar, Raipur to Jagdalpur, Dehradun to Nainital, Mount Abu to Jaipur and Srinagar to Leh. The Railway routes which were included in the test are: between Allahabad to Gorakhpur, Delhi to Mumbai and Jabalpur to Singrauli.

Either 3G or 2G network of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and state-run BSNL failed to meet call drop benchmark on four highway routes and all the three rail routes, the report says. TRAI in its report also named Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTL) network for not complying with service quality norms on select highways. According to this report, TTL-- which is in the process of merging mobile business with Airtel, failed to even complete call connection as per benchmark between Bengaluru to Murdeshwar, Dehradun to Nainital and Gaya to Danapur and on the three rail routes.

Through this report, it was also found that, while Airtel could not meet call connection rate or call setup success rate (CSSR) on Gaya to Danapur highway and the three rail routes, Vodafone Idea network-- could not meet CSSR rate on Raipur to Jagdalpur highway and all the three rail routes.

PTI reports that for some of the tests, in the results--TRAI has mentioned Vodafone and Idea separately as some tests were conducted before completion of their merger. Both the companies completed their merger on August 31 and now operate as Vodafone Idea Ltd.