Hey Telcos, we need phones to talk, not only to download videos.
Almost everyone in India has two SIM cards. I have been using Airtel and Vodafone networks for more than a decade and still am plagued with poor connectivity like other fellow citizens. Often at peak hours I find congested networks and the standard response from the phone is ‘ Network Is Busy’. At that time you cannot phone a person who is not using the phone and is sitting in the same room as you and having the same network. His phone is not busy but the network is. But you can download a video from that same network easily. Also if you try the other SIM card at that time you will find that the other network is working fine and you can talk.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the data for voice calls on its MyCall Dashboard portal .The results go a long way to reveal why most citizens in India use dual sims. Why despite paying twice to stay connected, Indians face some of the highest rates of call drop globally at 17.43% and are dogged by very poor voice quality. From the TRAI data we also learn that apart from call drops 21.87% of the calls suffer from poor voice quality. Only 60% of the calls that we make are of satisfactory quality as per the TRAI website on 22nd June 2022.
Strangely, Vodafone Idea with Best Voice Call Quality, Looses Money
Call quality for indoor calls received the poorest rating of 3.2 on a score of 5 while feedback from those calling from outdoor was slightly better at 3.4 on a score of 10. Comparison of voice quality across TSP showed VI score 4.0 , RJio scoring 3.2 , Airtel and BSNL getting 2.9 and 2.8 respectively. This development is however not recent. This has been a constant feature in competitive digital India since a decade. As per the data reported by Financial Express on 6th January 2021 Vodafone Idea offered the best voice quality with very high ratings even during the December 2020 pandemic days.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Idea registered 4.9 in the indoor / outdoor voice call quality with a a satisfactory rating of 97.59% in terms of call quality experience. Vodafone also had a average voice quality rating of 4.3. and a consumer satisfaction rating of 87.68%. Yet the VodafoneIdea network has been struggling to retain consumers because it is saddled with debt and cannot afford to spend on marketing. Also it often does not enter locations where it does not have adequate infrastructure to provide good quality service. So in those areas it’s service is not great and you have to use the second network. Besides it has certain data speed issues and it looses out in the profitable area of data and video downloads.Having two networks is not an issue though the cost virtually doubles if it really ensures 100% connectivity on a 24x7 basis. But it does not, and friends and associates often complain that your network is always busy unless they have both your numbers and the time and energy to try out both. We will in the next week find out why this problem is so persistent and what ails the networks and the efforts TRAI has made to improve services that has been resisted by the Telcos . TRAI orders have been struck down by the Courts when they imposed penalties for call drop in 2017
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