The Department of Telecommunications, or DoT, will do a special audit of telecom networks in order to check the quality of service. This, according to Union Telecom & IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, is necessary because the problem of call drops has attained "critical proportions". This has happened even though telecom companies were given fresh spectrum in February. The minister has said that he has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or Trai, to work out a system of penalties for errant companies and incentives for those which provide good quality service. An audit of the quality of service is not a bad idea: everybody knows poor call quality is a major problem, but nobody knows exactly how big this problem is. Trai is required to monitor the quality of service across networks, but it has been unable to quantify the problem so far.
However, to only ask the telecom service operators to improve the quality of service and hold them responsible is likely to yield partial results. Instead, the government should also make more spectrum available, which it has failed to do so far. In spite of having bought spectrum in February, most companies are bursting with customers. Indian service operators have a fraction of the spectrum owned by their global peers, but many times more subscribers. India, as a result, has the most congested telecom networks in the world. With data usage on the rise, the congestion is getting from bad to worse. If the government really wanted to ease the situation, which would have solved the problems of drooped calls and slow data transfer, it should have made more spectrum available. The problem has been that when it comes to auctioning spectrum, the government has not been guided by the need to decongest networks, but instead by revenue possibilities. For instance, the armed forces had vacated 15 MHz of spectrum, yet the government auctioned only 5 MHz in February. It was then argued that the government had not got possession of the spectrum from the armed forces by the time the auctions were held. But nothing would have gone wrong if it had included the additional spectrum in the auction with the condition that what was not in its possession then would be allotted to the telcos as and when it was available. If the entire lot had been auctioned then, congestion would have eased to a large extent - but it would have brought down the government's revenue. The government has also been tardy with guidelines for spectrum sharing. While the large service operators are short of spectrum, some of the smaller ones have surplus spectrum. A market for spectrum that addresses this imbalance is overdue.
Apart from inadequate spectrum, the other factor that has worsened the quality of telecom services is the inability of service operators to put up towers. Thanks to fears of harmful radiation - which have been disputed by most scientists and by public health authorities such as the American Cancer Society - some people are reluctant to let towers come up in their neighbourhood. As a result, service operators find it very difficult to install towers. For instance, Bharti Airtel, the country's largest telecom company, needs 217 towers in New Delhi's Lutyens' bungalow zone but has only 117 sites. In such a scenario, service quality is bound to suffer. On the positive side, Mr Prasad has said that DoT will approach the Union urban development ministry to allow telecom companies to set up towers in all central government buildings in metros and state capitals. He said he would write to all chief ministers for similar accommodation. That should address the tower problem, though only partially.
