Vodafone to resolve call drops on a war footing

The company has identified that 490 sites are required to get a good network.

Vodafone India, facing flak over frequent call drops on its network, has invested Rs 500 crore in the first eight months of the current financial year to improve its services in Delhi and the national capital region but expressed reservations on the order to compensate users for dropped calls.

The company’s Managing Director and CEO, Sunil Sood, said they were working on a war footing to improve services.

“We have actually set up a war room in Delhi…We extended our budget; between April and end of November we have invested above Rs. 500 crore to modernise our networks and there has been a significant improvement,” he said.

Asked if the company will take a legal recourse on telecom regulator’s order mandating that telecom companies to compensate users for dropped calls, Mr Sood said: “We would like to have a dialogue with the government over compensation plans. All stakeholders need to work together to fix problem rather that look at things like compensation. Nowhere in the world do we have such rules.”

According to a survey by Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cell which operates under the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) call drop on Vodafone’s network in Delhi was in the range of 0.3-2.97 in October, an improvement from 1.53-6.63 in August. Telecom regulator TRAI has set a benchmark of 2 per cent.

“The improvement is also due to the addition of new cell sites (geographical location). We had identified that 490 sites are required to get a good network. In the last month we added record number of 160 cites. We are working towards putting up at least 2-3 sites a month,” Mr Sood said.

The company has over 6,000 cell sites in Delhi NCR.

Mr. Sood said the company has brought in additional 50 technical experts from their other circles to expedite network optimisation process. It has also hired other third-party network optimisation teams.

Vodafone India, which is the country’s second largest telecom operator, will also be launching 4G services in five circles, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Karnataka and Kerala before the end of March 2016.

Vodafone to invest $2 billion in India

The planned capacity expansions and investments in the high-end technology centre and the customer service centres will create opportunities for employment and for skilling and training India’s rich talent pool.

Vodafone, India’s second-largest telecommunications service provider by number of users, will invest Rs.13,000 crore or $2 billion on capacity expansion and new business initiatives.

Vodafone, which ranks behind Bharti Airtel in the Indian telecom market, is already the largest FDI investor in the country with investments exceeding Rs.1,11,000 crore since starting its Indian operations in 2007.

Vittorio Colao, Vodafone Group Plc CEO, committed to the latest investment during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in London on Friday. The announcement of the increase in investment comes as the U.K. major readies to tap the Indian capital market with an initial public offering.

“At Vodafone, we are enthused with the PM’s vision for ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’. Vodafone India serves over 188 million citizens, of which almost 100 million are from rural areas. As the co-creator of the telecom ecosystem, a catalyst of the telecom revolution in India and being committed for the long term, we are ideally poised to partner the Government of India in fulfilling these important initiatives,” Mr. Colao said in a statement. “We are pleased to announce our enhanced commitment to India,” he said.

The planned capacity expansions and investments in the high-end technology centre and customer service centres will create opportunities for employment and for skilling and training India’s rich talent pool. Vodafone will accordingly increase its staffing levels to 15,000 employees over the next two years, the company said in the statement.

“We have recently begun preparations for a potential IPO of Vodafone India, subject to market conditions,” the London-based Group said earlier this week.

Vodafone’s India business, in addition to being the highest contributor to Vodafone Group’s service revenue growth, has the largest customer base, is the largest data traffic market (by volume) and the third largest contributor to Vodafone Group’s service revenues.

Vodafone India reported a 9 per cent year-on-year increase in first-half operating profit, driven by strong growth in data traffic and revenue.

India also signed five other deals, including in clean energy and financial services amounting to 9 billion Pounds during Mr. Modi’s visit.