| MUMBAI:
The growth of mobile network is taking place at a very rapid pace and about 8
million subscribers are added every month. In order to ensure seamless interconnection,
TRAI has been monitoring the level of congestion at the Point of Interconnection
(POI) between various service providers on a monthly basis. This parameter signifies
the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with a customer
of another network. This parameter also reflects as to how effective is the interconnection
between two networks. The benchmark notified by TRAI in the QoS Regulation of
July 2005 for this parameter is <0.5%. This means out of 200 calls between
two operators only one call should face congestion problem. The result of the
monitoring reveals that in a number of areas, the degree of congestion between
the operators is alarming. In a number of cities, the level of congestion between
the networks of different operators is far more than this benchmark. Cellular
Mobile Service Providers have submitted their POIs Congestion Reports in TRAI
for the months of January, February and March 2008.
We have included only
the Service Providers who do not meet the TRAI stipulated POI Congestion benchmark
of <0.5% in any of their service areas.
The POI Congestion Report analysis
for the month of January, 2008 to March, 2008 shows that the performance of the
CMSPs with respect to the congestion on POIs has improved in the month of March,
2008 as compared with the performance in December, 2007. During the period Cellular
Mobile Telephone Subscriber base has increased from 233.62 million in December
2007 to 261.07 million in March 2008. The number of POIs having congestion has
decreased from 315 in December, 2007 to 275 in March, 2008.
Out of these
275 POIs in March, 2008, in 141 POIs, the level of congestion is more than 5%
as compared to 153 POIs in December, 2007.
The number of such POIs where
the level of congestion is more than 10% is 94 in March, 2008, whereas it was
105 in the month of December, 2007.
The number of POIs where congestion
level is more than 40% is 32 in the month of March, 2008 whereas it was 26 in
the month of December, 2007.
In respect of POIs from Private CMSPs to BSNL/MTNL,
the number of POIs having congestion has decreased from 203 in December 2007 to
118 in March, 2008.
During
the same period POI congestion among Private CMSPs has increased from 108 in December,
2007 to 157 in March, 2008.
Amongst the private service providers, Bharti
Airtel has the largest number of POIs having Congestion (83 POIs as of March '08)
followed by Dishnet Wireless (44 POIs as of March '08), Vodafone (43 POIs of March
'08), Reliance Communications (41 POIs) and Idea (34 POIs) .
" The
Circles/ States more affected due to POI congestion are Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan,
North East, Haryana and West Bengal.
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