The prospect of a fine on call drops seems to have compelled telecom operators to improve their network to bring down their call drop rates.

The latest data of the TERM Cell, the vigilance and resource monitoring arm of Department of Telecom (DoT), revealed that all major telecom operators had registered an improvement in their call drop rates in Delhi till October-end, and were now only marginally above the benchmark rate of 2%.

The latest improvement in the call drop situation in Delhi, which was amongst the worse areas, comes after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recently cracked its whip by coming out with a proposal for imposing a penalty of Re1 per call drop with a limit of three for one day.

As per TERM's survey, the market leader, in terms of number of subscriber-base, Bharti Airtel had seen a steep decline in its call drop rate from 2.92%-17.77% in August to 0.08%-2.9% in October in Delhi. During the same period, Idea's call drop rate fell from 3.34%-10.90% to 0.14%-2.65%, Vodafone's from 1.53%-6.63% to 0.3%-2.97%, RCom's from 1.53%-24.83% to 0.02%-5.15% and Aircel's from 0.77%-6.21% to 0.29%-2.66%.

This DoT data comes a day after Trai came out with the call drop rate numbers for the first quarter of the current fiscal that indicated worsening of the situation from the previous quarter.

According to telecom regulator's statistics published on Tuesday, mobile operators had a call drop rate of as much as 24.59% for 2G services and 16.13% for 3G services in the April-June quarter.

The TERM Cell numbers, put out on Wednesday, show most telecom companies (telcos) rates were moving closer to the benchmark rate of 2%, but telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he would like it to see further improvement.

The acceptable rate of calls getting disconnected automatically in India is 2% and can go up to 3% in peak hours or congested area.

"While I am happy with the improvement (in the call drop rates), there is more scope for improvement. For this, new steps have to be taken. NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Corporation) has been approached and they are willing to give their sites for putting up towers. Post office is also ready to give sites. I have instructed MTNL and others to go for In Building Solution (IBS) for Parliament, North Block and South Block, which have thick walls," he said.

The minister informed that the operators had installed 7,528 new cell sites for 2G services and 14,751 for 3G services, of which 760 cell sites for 2G services and 1,332 for 3G services were in Delhi. Today, the total number of installed cell sites across India was 18.33 lakh.

The call drop rates have improved also because 13,775 cell sites have been repaired. The last survey had shown 27,598 cell sites were defective. This left 13,823 more cell sites to be repaired.

Bangalore-based telecom executive G Krishna Kumar said Trai's ultimatum to the operators to improve services or pay fine seemed to be working well.

"I don't think the fine would be imposed. It was only meant to be a deterrent (for the telcos) and seems to be working fine with all of them (telcos) swinging into action," he said.