The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has come out with its latest quality of service (QoS) report on network congestion of cellular mobile service providers (CMSPs) for the month of August. The report is based on the responses of operators to additional parameters specified by TRAI for monitoring congestion at the points of interconnection (PoIs) between operators in its QoS regulation of July 2005.
The operators are required to submit data on “PoI congestion” and “blocked call rate” on a monthly basis. The benchmarks for these are as follows:
According to TRAI, the level of congestion between the networks of private operators and those of state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) exceeds the benchmark in a number of major and minor cities, and the number is increasing.
Despite a TRAI directive issued on June 7, 2005 to service providers asking them to provide interconnection at the request of the interconnection seeker within 90 days of the payments due to the latter, there has been a delay in augmenting the inter-network junctions. This, according to the regulator, is the reason for such high levels of congestion.
What is a cause of concern is that the number of places with a congestion level of more than 10 per cent ?? which is 20 times worse than the benchmark ?? has increased from 86 in July 2005 to 153 in August 2005. In some major cities like Patna, Agra and Lucknow, the level of congestion between the PoIs of private CMSPs and BSNL TAXs continues to be very high.
For instance, the congestion level at the PoI between Reliance Infocomm and BSNL in Patna was 69.9 per cent, as of August 2005 while in Lucknow it was 58.7 per cent. The congestion level at the PoIs between Reliance Infocomm and BSNL in the same city has been as high as 80 per cent in some places. Tata Teleservices has a congestion level of 87.5 per cent at its PoI with BSNL in Patna. Similarly, the intensity of congestion at the PoIs between Idea and BSNL is as high as 64 per cent in some places and 55 per cent in Agra.
The Hutch-BSNL PoI at Jalandhar in Punjab has a particularly high congestion level at 86 per cent. Bharti has registered a congestion level as high as 94 per cent at some of its PoIs with BSNL. Barring a few, none of the operators has been able to achieve the benchmark as far as PoI congestion is concerned.
TRAI recognises that BSNL also has congestion in its radio network in a number of service areas. Against a benchmark of less than 2 per cent for TCH congestion, the performance of the PSU has been particularly bad in all the service areas when compared to the figures of July 2005. The current congestion figures range from 3 per cent to 16 per cent in the service areas of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chennai, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West).
The regulator has listed several causes for the high network congestion and blocked call rate. These are:
As a result of the poor quality of service, subscribers suffer from frequent blocking of calls, recurrent call drops and poor voice quality. TRAI has thus been receiving a number of complaints from consumers regarding call drops, poor coverage, etc. in various cities, especially in the metros, where the number of subscribers has increased manifold during the last five years.
Given the number of complaints TRAI has been receiving, it has come up with a study paper on the quality of service of cellular mobile services in Mumbai. Besides the serious problems arising from the lack of adequate interconnections, the problems in the city also relate to the inability of operators to provide sufficient towers or cells. TRAI has been discussing these issues with various service providers.
As part of the study, it recently conducted QoS tests in Mumbai to assess the situation in the metro city with Bharti Tele Ventures (Airtel), Hutch and BPL. The study found that the cellular mobile subscriber base in Mumbai has shown exponential growth, from about 970,000 in March 2002 to 5,095,000 in March 2005. However, the regulator notes that there are a number of problems associated with the high growth in cellular subscribers. For instance, the Airtel network is experiencing increasing congestion at its PoIs with MTNL.
TRAI also found that there are problems relating to spectrum. Operators are facing a shortage of spectrum due to the high growth in subscribers and the delay in allocating additional spectrum. Because of the lack of spectrum, operators are not able to optimise their frequencies to generate good voice quality in the CBD (central business district) areas during peak hours.
Moreover, in dense areas, more transceiver units are required for site configuration. Because of this, there is increased loading on the existing frequencies, which is resulting in co-channel and adjacent channel interference.
The point is that GSM service providers have already crossed the upper limit for allocation of spectrum. In light of the growing problem of network congestion, the government may have to consider allocation of additional spectrum.
