Telcos will spend Rs. 12,000 Crores in next three months to tackle call drop

Indian telcos have committed to invest around Rs 12,000 Crores in the next three months to improve networks which should help check the call drop issue in the country, telecom secretary JS Deepak has said.

"The mobile phone operators have promised to add 60,000 new cell sites where they need to improve their quality of service," Deepak told reporters on Friday.

"The government believes in the telecom sector. The quality of service must improve and industry has responsibility," he said. Telecom operators present at the meeting included Bharti Airtel CEO (India, South Asia) Gopal Vittal, Vodafone India CEO Sunil Sood, Idea Cellular Managing Director Himanshu Kapania and Reliance Jio Infocomm MD Sanjay Mashruwala.

"We discussed with the telecom secretary how we plan to address the issue and the concerns of the sector," Rajan Mathews, director general of industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said after the meet.

The meeting comes at a time when ties between the telcos and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) have reached a low with both parties adopting aggressive stance against one another on several issues.

Image credit: Indiatimes