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Our Bureau

Pvt operators, BSNL have better interconnection now

New Delhi , Oct. 14

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Saturday said that there was an improvement in the congestion levels of cellular services with an increase in the number of places that met the TRAI-set benchmark.

Though the TRAI said that the congestion levels in some areas were still alarming, the congestion report analysis for the period May-July 2006 shows that the number of point of interconnection having congestion has decreased from 616 in May to 537 by July-end. Point of interconnection is the physical place where one operator hands over traffic to another operator. TRAI has stipulated that out of 200 calls between two operators only one call should face congestion problem.

Over the last one year, the number of such points of interconnection where congestion levels were much higher than the TRAI benchmark had been on the rise. This is the first time that cellular congestion has shown signs of improvement.

Reasons cited

The improvement has primarily been due to better interconnection between the private operators and state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. As per the report, congestion levels between BSNL and private operators have decreased from 517 points of interconnection to 426.

The Authority had earlier hauled up BSNL for not offering enough bandwidth to private operators which was causing congestion. The congestion at points of interconnection is on account of inadequate circuits between two networks and this leads to loss of calls and the consequent poor quality of service to the consumers.

However, during the same period congestion between the networks of two private operators has worsened. The worst affected areas are Bihar, North East, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

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