What's wrong with cell networks?

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">* Lalit Sharma has to meet his girlfriend at MacDonald''s. Suddenly, he gets a call from his boss for an urgent meeting. He tries to call his girlfriend but he gets a ''network busy'' signal every time he dials the number. Frustrated, he rushes to the meeting, leaving the poor girl waiting.<br /><br />* Dr Jacky Lalmalani, a urologist, complains: "Sometimes, relatives of patients give me emergency calls on the cellphone, but they just can''t get through." Lalmalani does at least four operations a day and says that communication failures lead to many complications.These problems are not linked to any one singular cellular service provider. While cellphone users are fuming, service providers maintain that they aren''t to blame as as the number of subscribers has far exceeded capacity.<br /><br />Orange CEO (Maharashtra) Sandeep Das blames the inadequate frequency spectrum. "We have the spectrum of 8 megahertz (mhz). While our customer base has increased — nine lakh in Mumbai — the spectrum remains the same, so capacity is low. We have asked for an additional 2 mhz from the government, which has been delayed. We''ll have no hassles once we get the additional spectrum," Das says, adding that there has been a huge extra load on the capacity after incoming calls were made free. When asked why connecting to a cellphone from an MTNL line isn''t easy either, Das says that there has been no progress in the interconnectivity agreement between them and MTNL. Orange is now planning to add 40 cellsites to its existing 600 and invest Rs 200 crore in a month''s time to ease the pressure.<br /><br />When asked whether the entry of so many cellular players in the market has led to jamming of the network, BPL Vice-President Deepak Verma says, "On May 1, as per the agreement, incoming calls became free, leading to growth in traffic. We have already doubled our capacity and the equipment is awaiting customs clearance. In next seven days, everything should be set right as a huge number of transmitter plants have also been been procured."<br /><br />AirTel COO Atul Jhamb claims the company is facing no problems. "AirTel is a new entrant. With a customer base of 4 lakh and 300 extra cell sites, it still has 40 per cent unutilised capacity," he says, adding that as far as connectivity from landlines is concerned, infrastructure is being augmented. <br /><br />Reliance Infocomm spokesperson Jimmy Mogal also claims that they have no network problems. "Our system is designed to take more load. There could be a problem when you call other cellular numbers because of lack of cell sites and infrastructure," he says. Similarly, Tata Indicom CEO U V L Pandit says that, being new players, they have no such problems.<br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">nirmal.mishra@timesgroup.com</span></div> </div>