Jio Aces in Call Drop Tests

In a clean sweep, Reliance Jio has aced the list of winners for the Call Drop tests conducted by TRAI ( Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) in testing of call quality on few selected highways & railway routes. This is a no small achievement given the short experience of the new entrant against other old age telcos.

The test was conducted by TRAI itself on the highways between Gaya to Danapur, Digha to Asansol, Asansol to Gaya, Bengaluru to Murdeshwar, Raipur to Jagdalpur, Dehradun to Nainital, Mount Abu to Jaipur and Sri Nagar to Leh. Also, Railway routes between Allahabad to Gorakhpur, Delhi to Mumbai and Jabalpur to Singrauli were covered.

According to a TRAI official test report, while network performance of telcos differed on highways, none of them, except Reliance Jio, could meet call drop benchmark on the three rail routes covered under the test. "Only Reliance Jio is meeting quality of service benchmark of drop call rate ...," the report said. According to the quality of service rules, not more than 2 per cent of total calls in a telecom circle on a network should automatically get disconnected.

The report said that neither 3G nor 2G network of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and state-run BSNL passed to meet call drop benchmark on selected highway routes and all the three rail routes. The report stated that Tata Teleservices Ltd (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.

On the other hand, Airtel could not meet call connection rate or call setup success rate on Gaya to Danapur highway and the three rail routes. Vodafone Idea network could not meet required rate on Raipur to Jagdalpur highway and all the three rail routes. Vodafone and Idea were considered separately in the result as some tests were conducted before completion of their merger.

These results indicate a possibility that old telcos might be compromising with their infrastructure in a bid to compensate staggering losses being incurred in the war of data. Other possible reasons are yet to be revealed by respective telecom companies.