Bharti and Reliance run most congested networks: TRAI

26 August 2008

India's top telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd,  currently has the largest number of congested points of interconnection (PoI) with other networks, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The telecom regulator's report on network congestion in April - June quarter, said  Bharti Airtel's congestion was at 56 PoIs, followed by Reliance Communications at 22 PoIs, Aircel with 21 PoIs and Vodafone with 19.

The states most affected by network congestion PoIs were Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, the North-East and Himachal Pradesh.

The report says that the performance of the cellular service providers network congestion had improved in June 2008, compared to March, 2008 even as the subscriber base grew by 25 million. The number of points having congestion had decreased from 275 in March 2008, to 156 in June 2008.

"The growth of mobile network is taking place at a very rapid pace and about 8 million subscribers are added every month," the report said.

In order to ensure seamless interconnection, TRAI has been monitoring the level of congestion at the point of interconnection between various service providers on a monthly basis.

The PoI parameter signifies the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with a customer on another network.It also reflects the effectiveness of the interconnection between two networks.

The regulator said that the benchmark notified by TRAI in the quality of service (QoS) regulations in June 2005 for such congestion was less than 0.5 per cent. ''This means out of 200 calls between two (telecom) operators only one call should face congestion problem,'' it said.