Bhubaneswar: The apex telecom regulatory body TRAI (Telecom Authority of India) has recently conducted an Independent Drive Test (IDT) to assess the quality of telecom service providers in the Licensed Service Areas (LSA) of Bhubaneswar.
The IDT report released Wednesday by TRAI has brought to fore the vast telecom services glitches subscribers in Odisha face, despite introduction of 5G services in the City.
A glance at the report shows, if this has been the quality of services in the State Capital city, what to expect in the remote places in the State.
ABOUT TRAI IDT
As per TRAI release, the top telecom regulator has conducted the test drive through its appointed agency in the State capital area of Bhubaneswar. It has conducted the tests inside the temple city, on highways and rail network to assess the quality of voice and data service of all the telecom providers operating in the state of Odisha.
The test drive was conducted in the Temple city in December 2024, and the report was released Wednesday.
The TRAI release adds that, under the drive test, performances of Airtel, BSNL, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea providing services in the LSA through various technologies (like 2G/ 3G/ 4G/ 5G) for voice and data were measured.
TRAI has measured the following in the city of Bhubaneswar at 6 hotspots, 3 walk tests and with interoperator services to rate the quality of voice/data services provided by the TSPs (telecom service providers).
The TRAI release has stated that it has conducted the IDT covering 355.8kms in the city and 10.8 kms in walk test.
- VOICE QUALITY
- Call setup success rate
- Drop call rate (DCR)
- Speech Quality using MOS (mean opinion score)
- Downlink & Uplink packet (voice) drop rate
- Call Silence Rate
- Coverage (%)- Signal strength
- Data Service:
- Data Throughput (Downlink and uplink both)
- Packet drop rate (Downlink & Uplink)
- Video streaming delay
- Latency
- Jitter
ODISHA TELECOM MARKET
Odisha’s spine of the telecom network is the four telecom service providers such as Airtel, Relaince Jio, VI and BSNL. A look at the subscription data in the State below shows the top TSP in the State.
- Relaince Jio – Subcribers in Odisha – 1.5cr
- Bharati airtel – Subcribers in Odisha – 1.17cr
- BSNL – Subscribers in Odisha – 55.63 lakh
- Vodafone Idea – Subscribers in Odisha – 13.82 lakh
The above data shows Jio and Airtel together corner 2.67cr subscribers, BSNL follows with 55.63lakh. VI has as pie of only 13.82 lakh.
TRAI OBSERVATIONS ON TELE QUALITY
A glance at the TRAI summary observations shows that while Vodafone Idea has the overall best voice call services in Odisha, the leaders in telecom service providers in the country and State, Airtel and Reliance Jio, seems faring poorer.
However, it is the public sector telecom giant BSNL which fared the poorest in both voice and data services.
The telecom subscribers, even, in the State Capital are facing with bad signal strength, congestion and non-efficient network.
In the all important data services, Jio operating on 5G/4G network here had the highest average download speed of nearly 237Mbps, whereas Airtel has the highest upload speed of over 30Mbps.
BSNL fares the poorest here, too, vis-à-vis Vodafone Idea, when TRAI says both are operating with 4G/3G network.
DETAILS BELOW
- Call Setup Success Rate: As the name suggests, this indicator measures how successfully a caller connects to another number. This measures service provider’s network efficiency. The IDT numbers given below.
- 1) Vodafone Idea:100%
- 2) Airtel: 99.44%
- 3)Jio: 99.32%
- 4) BSNL: 51.51%,
- Call Setup Time: This indicator measures how instantly a caller connects to another number. This yardstick highlights network congestion and signal strength in open mode (5G/4G/3G/2G).
- BSNL: takes 2.78 seconds to establish the voice call
- Airtel: 0.51 seconds
- Jio: 0.60 seconds
- Vodafone Idea:0.5 seconds
- Call Drop Rate: This indicator measures how many times a caller sees a cut before the completion of call. In simple, it measures how many calls break abruptly while talking. 0% means best
- BSNL: call drop rate at 1.77% is higher than the Quality of Service benchmark of 2%
- Airtel: 0.14%
- Jio: 0.96%
- Vodafone Idea: 0%
- Call Silence/Mute Rate: This indicator measures how often in between calls, the voice goes mute. This shows how the signal strength of a service provider is. TRAI measured this in packet switched network (4G/5G),
- Airtel: 0%
- BSNL:3.95%
- Jio: 1.31%
- Vodafone Idea: 0.19%
- Mean Opinion Score (MOS): measures the quality of the voice of both caller and receiver.
- VIL: scores 4.64
- Airtel: 4.00
- Only these two service providers have score a MOS score ≥ 4
- BSNL: 2.69
- Jio: 3.88
DATA SERVICES QUALITY
The data services of telecom providers assume much importance as data service are spine of digital India. The TRAI has measured both the downloading and uploading speed.
- Download performance (Dynamic):
- BSNL: data speed 3.86 Mbps
- VodafoneIdea: 32.99 Mbps
- It says both providers are operating on 4G/3G technologies, resulting into lower average download speed.
- Airtel: 151.65Mbps
- Jio: 236.83Mbps
- Both operators are operating on 5G/4G network
- Data Upload performance (Dynamic):
- BSNL: 4.27 Mbps
- VodafoneIdea: 18.87 Mbps
- Airtel:30.78Mbps
- Jio: 20.49Mbps
