Centre locks horns with telecom firms

Union minister for communication and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday lashed out at telecom service providers on the issue of call drops and said that the government would not hesitate to take stringent action against inefficient service providers.

Stating that smooth network connectivity will be a vital factor for the success of the government’s ‘Digital India’, the minister asked telecom service providers to ramp up their infrastructure.

“We are a country of 100 crore mobile connections, 40 crore internet connections. It is a very big market for the companies. I appreciate their effort in spreading mobile services across the country. But it is also their responsibility to plug the gap and provide a quality service. The government is very much concerned as smooth network connectivity is essential for the ‘Digital India’ programme,” Mr Prasad said, adding that the government would take stringent action against companies, which fail to resolve the network congestion issue.

While speaking to reporters in Mumbai after reviewing the performance of state-owned undertakings such as BSNL, MTNL and India Post, the minister said that the telecom operators need to do more as the measures taken by them during the last few months are not sufficient enough to address the current crisis.

On a subtle note, Mr Prasad also questioned the commitment of telecom service providers in providing better service to their customers.

According to him, about 25,000 new telecom towers were installed across India during the last 3-4 months only after the government warned them about stringent action and penalties.   

“They should have done it earlier. Why did they wait for the government to intervene?” Mr Prasad asked, referring to Trai’s regulation on penalising service providers for call drops.