NEW DELHI: A group of telecom service providers has sought the government’s urgent intervention in resolving a peculiar glitch associated with some dual-SIM 4G smartphones that’s eroding the quality of services provided by them.The Cellular Operators’ Association of India, which includes Bharti Airtel Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio Infocomm , said there was a problem with 4G-enabled, dual-SIM smartphones using MediaTek’s chipset: the flow of data in the primary 4G SIM slot was hampered when a 4G LTE-only SIM was placed in the second slot, meant for 2G SIMs.Smartphone makers must be mandated to fix the issue using an over-the-air upgrade in the next four weeks or withdraw such devices from the market, COAI director general Rajan Mathews proposed in a letter to the secretary of the Department of Telecommunications and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.Placing a 4G LTE-only SIM in the second slot “significantly deteriorates the throughput of any other operator’s 4G SIM present in the main slot by as much as 40%,” the COAI said in the letter.However, there was no such impact if a 4G LTE-only SIM was put in the first slot and a 4G SIM was in the second slot. MediaTek , the Taiwan-based chipset manufacturer, acknowledged there were recent reports of technical glitches in handsets and said the company is treating the issue with utmost priority.“We are working closely with all the telecom operators to get to the bottom of this. MediaTek’s solutions are globally compliant and completely adhere with global standard bodies-defined guidelines,” a MediaTek India representative said in an emailed statement to ET.At present, only Reliance Jio Infocomm has a 4G LTE-only network in the country.The industry body urged the government to ensure that devices with 2G SIM slots are phased out in the next six months. Smartphones with dual SIMs must have both slots configured to match the device standard of 3G or 4G, it said. The COAI sought an outright ban on any mobile device found to be adversely impacting data throughput. It urged the government to mandate device testing and certification for compliance in the Indian environment before launching them.The problem has been observed only in devices with Media-Tek chipsets. “The analysis so far points to a chipset specific implementation by MediaTek. It is estimated that MediaTek chipsets are present in more than 35% of the smartphones in the country,” the COAI said.The association said that in the past, the onus of calls drops and quality of service had been laid solely on telecom service providers, while ignoring the role of devices and handsets.