Bharti Airtel, RCom run most congested networks

India’s leading mobile service provider , Bharti Airtel is also leading the other service providers by running the most congested network in the country. Airtel is followed by Reliance communications and Aircel. According to TRAI’s report, Bharti Airtel has 56 point of interconnections (POI) having congestion problem while Rcom has 22 congested POIs and Airtel has 21 congested POIs. Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, the North-East and Himachal Pradesh are the areas which are severly affected by having more number of congested networks.

Point of intersection (POI) is the physical place where two networks are connected. Congestion at POI’s indicate that customers in one network may need multiple trials to connect to a customer in another network. According to the standards of TRAI, a customer can face congestion problem for one call for the every 200 calls he makes and is the permissible limit for a POI. The above quoted number indicates the no. of POIs failing to meet the permissible limits. On a monthly basis, TRAI is monitoring the congestion levels at the POIs of various service providers to ensure seamless network connection.

However there is good news that no.of congested POIs got reduced in June 2008 when compared to March 2008. In March it was 275 and now the number has come down to 156. In this period, Vodafone Essar has shown an significant improvement by reducing the congested POIs count to 19 from 43.