The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has named Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and Airtel among the cell phone service providers failing to meet the quality of service norms in Delhi or Mumbai, especially on mobile call drops.

The audit, done by an independent agency in the two metros, on behalf of the regulator, found that Tata (CDMA) in Delhi and Bharti Airtel in Mumbai are the only service providers meeting the benchmark of less than 2 per cent call drops.

In Delhi, the highest call drop rate was that of Reliance (17.29 per cent), followed by Airtel (8.04 per cent), Aircel (5.18 per cent), Vodafone (4.28 per cent) and Idea (2.84 per cent). The call drop rate for Tata (CDMA) stood at 0.84 per cent.

The situation is no better in Mumbai with Idea registering the highest call drop rate of 5.56 per cent, followed by Tata (GSM) (5.51 per cent), Vodafone (4.83 per cent), Aircel (3.19 per cent) and Reliance (2.29 per cent). For Airtel, this was 0.97 per cent.

The TRAI said the drive was conducted in view of complaints on call drops and other network issues on June 23 and June 24 in Mumbai and July 9 to 11 in Delhi.

“The results revealed that most of the operators are not meeting the benchmarks of the network related parameters. They failed to achieve the benchmarks due to high block call rate, high drop call rate, low call setup success rate and poor Rx Quality,” the regulator said.

As per the audit report, barring Tata (CDMA) in Delhi, none of the service providers in Delhi and Mumbai, meets the benchmark for Rx Quality, which measures voice quality during calls.

The number of call drop complaints by mobile phone subscribers has been on the rise, especially in metros. However, operators, on their part, have cited lack of spectrum and delay in its allocation as one of the reasons for network-related issues along with hurdles in installing mobile towers due to radiation issues.

The TRAI report points out that during the last six months around 801 sites in Mumbai and 523 sites in Delhi were shut down due to reasons such as sealing of sites by municipal authorities and radiation-related issues. The closure of each site impacts three to four neighbouring sites and this may lead to increased call drops.