India's mobile phone dreams become nightmare of dropped calls

Anguish over dropped calls has cut across income levels and social strata and led to unkind jokes about the country as the "call drop nation." The government-run national consumer complaints help line reported that dropped calls ranked near the top of the list of all grievances in July and August. The issue was the cover story of a national newsmagazine in July. And a TV station has launched a social media campaign called #NoCallDrops.

The problem of poor mobile quality came to a head in recent weeks in the nation's capital after dozens of transmission towers were invalidated by the municipal corporation. The nation's top three cellphone makers were called before a parliamentary committee looking into the problem, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked his officials to fix it.

Radhika Misra, 41, a businesswoman who works from her home in the upscale suburb of Gurgaon, said dropped calls and patchy signals are affecting her discussions with clients.

"This is hugely frustrating," Misra said. "I have to sit in one corner of my home, tilt my neck to 45 degrees in one direction to catch the signal."

The trouble, technology analysts said, is threatening Modi'spet project called Digital India: an $18 billion plan to connect India's cities and villages to the Internet with a combination of broadband connectivity and WiFi. Today, most of India's 350 million Internet users access the Web on their mobile devices.

"India's mobile network is under tremendous stress," Prasanto K. Roy, a technology consultant, said. "And if we fail to address mobile connectivity problems, it will directly hit the government's Digital India initiative." Mobile connectivity is key because the number of land lines and broadband users has remained stagnant, with WiFi hot spots few and far between, he said.

For decades, getting a land line in India meant endless waiting and struggle. Even today, 26 million land-line phone connections exist in the country.

But the pace of cellphone connections has grown at lightning speed, jumping from 48 million a decade ago to 980 million today.

The boom was celebrated as a bridging technology that helped India "leapfrog" over traditional and more expensive means of communication. In India, more people have cellphones than access to electricity, roads, computers or television.

The cellphone was touted as the magic bullet for myriad problems. It acted as a bank in farflung villages. It became a powerful tool to submit online complaints about trash, open manholes and corrupt officials soliciting bribes. It informed farmers about crop prices and coming storms, and offered apps to boost women's safety.

But in recent months, the country's mobile phone system has begun to show strain.

The problem has become so widespread that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, a government watchdog group, said telephone companies would have to compensate consumers for the dropped calls - an unusual step in a nation where companies are rarely fined.

Government officials blame the telecom industry for the problem.

"The problem of call drops is a symptom of a complete and brazen disregard of consumer rights by the telephone companies," said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of Parliament. "The call-drop situation is a warning bell for policymakers who want to transform the country digitally."

An audit report last year by the regulatory board found that most of the telephone companies reported the incidence of dropped calls "way above" the 3 percent cap, board Chairman Ram Sewak Sharma said.

"The companies are going on adding millions of customers without investing in infrastructure and upgrading technology," Sharma said.

But telephone company officials said they must work with the world's lowest spectrum bandwidth, or the radio frequency bands used to transmit data.

"In India, the government agencies like police, military, railways and airlines are squatting on more than 60 percent of spectrum," said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India. "We carry an inordinate amount traffic on just one-third of the spectrum that most global companies have."

A public health scare among middle-class Indians has also compounded the situation.

Communities across Indian cities are saying they do not want to have a cellphone transmission tower in their densely populated neighborhoods because they fear that its radiation may harm their health. Resident groups, activists and a Bollywood star have campaigned against the towers.

Mumbai city has banned towers near schools and hospitals.

And in the past year alone, about 1,700 sites have been shut down across India, said Mathews.

Amid the finger pointing between government and industry, ordinary consumers are feeling the brunt of the problem.

In a New Delhi neighborhood, residents said they must roam the streets to find a spot where their cellphones can connect. Shop owners complain their business is down.

"Patients cannot reach me when they urgently want medicines delivered to their homes," said Atul Gupta, who runs a pharmacy.

Across the road, a police station is without any cellphone connectivity, and officers have taken to standing under a tree outside to catch a signal.

"My beat constables cannot get through to me easily," said Govind Chauhan, the station house officer. "I miss crucial information from informers because the call drops."

In Gurgaon, this week, Misra got a call from her 8-year-old son's football coach. He was trying to tell her that her son had hurt his knee, but the calls kept dropping.