India’s parliament addresses call drop controversy

An Indian parliamentary panel has taken up the issue of call drops on new mobile operator Reliance Jio Infocomm’s network.

The panel met with GSM industry body COAI – representing the market’s incumbent operators – and Reliance Jio to discuss the reasons for the high number of call failures.

Reliance Jio has been engaged in a bitter dispute with operators over the issue of frequent call drops. Earlier this month, Jio said around 50% to 60% of calls from Jio users to the three largest mobile network operators Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular were failing or dropping.

While this has recently contracted to around 25%, this still represents a substantial number of call drops and call failures..

Reliance Jio has accused the operators of not making enough points of interconnection available to meet the demand for its pan-India mobile services. But incumbents have blamed the company’s strategy of offering free calls, which has led to a surge in network traffic.