The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has conducted independent drive tests (IDT) covering Shahdol and Korba cities, Shahdol to Korba highway and Korba to Rajnandgaon railway route of Madhya Pradesh (MP) licensed service area (LSA) during July 2025. The IDT have been designed to capture real-world mobile network performance across diverse usage environments, urban zones, hotspots, public transport hubs, etc.

TRAI, through its appointed agency, conducted detailed drive tests of 392.8 kilometre (km) of city test and 8.2 km of walk test in Shahdol and Korba, 153.6 km of highway test from Shahdol to Korba and 268.9 km of railway route from Korba to Rajnandgaon between July 7, 2025 to July 11, 2025. Technologies evaluated included 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G, reflecting the service experience of users across multiple handset capabilities. The findings of IDT have been intimated to all the TSPs concerned for further necessary action. The authority also assessed multiple quality parameters for both voice and data services.

The key parameters assessed during the drive tests are as follows:

a) Voice services: Call setup success rate (CSSR), drop call rate (DCR), call setup time, call silence rate, speech quality (MOS), coverage. b) Data services: Download/upload throughput, latency, jitter, packet drop rate, and video streaming delay.

Summary – Voice services

· CSSR: Bharti Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) and Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) have CSSR of 94.73 per cent, 85.00 per cent, 99.13 per cent and 96.91 per cent respectively in auto-selection mode (5G/4G/3G/2G).

· Call setup time: Airtel, BSNL, RJIL and Vi have call setup time of 1.27, 3.56, 0.66 and 0.80 seconds respectively in auto-selection mode.

· DCR: Airtel, BSNL, RJIL and Vi was 0.30 per cent, 3.42 per cent, 0.20 per cent and 0.60 per cent respectively in auto-selection mode.

· Call silence/mute rate: Airtel, BSNL, RJIL and Vi have silence call rate 0.59 per cent, 1.14 per cent, 0.15 per cent and 0.88 per cent respectively in packet switched network (4G/5G).

· Mean opinion score (MOS): Airtel, BSNL, RJIL and Vi have average MOS of 3.96, 3.07, 3.88 and 3.94 respectively.

Summary – Data services

· Data download performance (overall): Average download speed of Airtel (5G/4G/2G) is 82.67 megabits per second (Mbps), BSNL (4G/3G/2G) is 1.34 Mbps, RJIL (5G/4G) is 228.09 Mbps and Vi (4G/2G) is 29.78 Mbps.

· Data upload performance (overall): Average upload speed of Airtel (5G/4G/2G) is 15.57 Mbps, BSNL (4G/3G/2G) is 3.30 Mbps, RJIL (5G/4G) is 21.28 Mbps and Vi (4G/2G) is 15.43 Mbps.

Data performance – Hotspots (in Mbps):

· Airtel: 4G download speed (D/L): 40.42, 4G upload speed (U/L): 7.24, 5G D/L: 252.48, 5G U/L: 37.58

· BSNL: 4G D/L: 1.63, 4G U/L: 5.09

· RJIL: 4G D/L: 41.82, 4G U/L: 13.17, 5G D/L: 375.42, 5G U/L: 26.84

· Vi: 4G D/L: 28.11, 4G U/L: 14.19

The tests were conducted using TRAI calibrated equipment and standardised protocols in real-time environments.