Congestion level is rising with surging mobile subscriber base resulting in loss of calls and poor quality of service, but the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India says it cannot issue show cause over this lapse as the matter is subjudice.

As per TRAI's directives in 2005, all service providers are required to provide interconnection on the request of the interconnection-seeker within 90 days of the applicable payments. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd had gone to the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal against this directive, where the matter is still pending.

"The matter is pending with the tribunal, therefore, the authority is unable to issue show cause notices in cases of non-compliance," TRAI said.

The congestion parameter signifies the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with another of a different network. The benchmark notified by TRAI in the QoS Regulation of July 2005 says that the congestion level should be below 0.5 per cent, or only one in every 200 calls should face jam.

But the analysis by TRAI for the January-March period shows that the performance of the mobile operators with respect to the congestion on Points of Interconnection (PoIs) has deteriorated in March 2007, compared to the performance in December 2006.

The number of PoIs having congestion has increased from 389 in December 2006 to 499 in March 2007.

This leads to loss of calls, repeated call attempts by consumers, deterioration in Quality of Service (QoS) and consumer dissatisfaction.

The non-metro and tier-B and C class cities are the worst affected areas. Among the metros, Kolkata suffers most.

The circles or states badly affected due to PoI congestion are Bihar, Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, North East, West Bengal, UP (East), Orissa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kolkata, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Jammu & Kashmir, TRAI said on Monday in its latest network congestion report for January-March.

Out of these 499 PoIs in March, in 245 PoIs the level of congestion is more than 5 per cent as compared to 199 PoIs in December last year. The number of such PoIs where the level of congestion is more than 10 per cent is 183 in March, whereas it was 137 in the month of December, TRAI said.

The number of worst affected PoIs where congestion level is more than 40 per cent is 46 in the month of March as compared to 39 PoIs in December.

In respect of PoIs from private mobile operators to BSNL, the number of PoIs having congestion has increased from 300 in December 2006 to 337 in March.

During the same period, PoI congestion among private mobile operators has also increased from 89 to 162.