Telecom Ministry to soon introduce steps to reduce call drops

The Union Telecommunications Ministry is working to solve the issue of call drops on war-footing, following several complaints.
A call drop occurs when the call is unexpectedly disconnected, and it has become one of the most frequent complaints by mobile phone users. Several factors contribute to this issue, including network congestion, inadequate infrastructure, poor signal strength, and interferences caused by environmental conditions.
The Ministry has said that the monitoring of the quality of service will be done on a monthly basis from April 2025, in comparison with the three-month monitoring service. Notably, the call quality check was done at tower level earlier and from now on, it will be done at the smartphone level.
While earlier, local service area (LSA) was done to check the quality, the ministry will now conduct cell level monitoring. The government is trying to approach the issue of call drop through a more micro-microlevel approach.
The ministry is planning to set up 27,000 towers and connect 26,000 villages across the country to enhance connectivity.
The government is now looking to impose financial disincentives on telecom companies that do not meet the guidelines.
Graded financial disincentives of upto Rs 3 lakh per parameter will be imposed for non-compliance, for consecutive non-compliance with defined standards across 30 parameters.
The Ministry has also taken note of the frauds and scams that are happening across the country.
There is an alarming rise in the number of frauds that are committed online and now to tackle it, the government has set up a Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) for real-time information sharing on telecom misuse.
So far, 750 organisations are helping the ministry, including police, banks, and regulatory bodies.
Blocking Spoofed Calls: A system to block incoming international spoofed calls with Indian phone numbers was launched on October 24. The system blocked around 13.5 million calls daily (89.8 per cent of such calls), according to an official release.
Sanchar Saathi: Sanchar Saathi, is a citizen-centric platform which enables people to report suspicious calls and messages. So far, over 2.5 crore mobile connections have been disconnected with the help of the platform. Apart from this, over 2.29 lakh phones have been blocked for involvement in cybercrime and financial fraud.
The government has blacklisted over 71,000 sellers and registered FIR against 1,900 others. An investigation also led to tracing over 12.59 lakh stolen and lost mobile phones. The government has also disconnected over 18 lakh numbers in connection with fraud.
This crackdown extends to SMS fraud as well, where over 3.5 lakh unused and unverified messaging headers and 1.2 million content templates have been blocked.