New Delhi, Sep 28 (IANS): Aiming to address the issue of call drops, the government has conducted a special audit of cell towers and said that of 34,600 cell towers operating poorly, about 16,962 have improved their performance and the rest are in progress.

Saying that the telecom department is monitoring the telecom service quality on a weekly to 10-day basis with all operators, an official statement from the Department of Telecom on Monday said: "In the entire country, a special audit was done to adjudge their performance."

"Out of 34,600 cell towers operating poorly, about 16,962 towers have improved and the rest are in progress. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has also been requested to consider recommending incentives and disincentives for operators for call drops."

It stated that the government has been taking proactive measures to address the issue of call drops from April this year and the telecom secretary took a meeting of all operators, directing them to improve the conditions.

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is also monitoring the efforts.

"Some important policy decisions have been taken, whereby the Indian government buildings shall be permitted for installation of towers," the statement said.

It said Prasad has written to the chief ministers to permit tower installation on the state government buildings also, as has been done by the Kerala government.

"Even the Department of Post has been directed to do so in a transparent manner. All these initiatives have been taken in the last three to four months," it said.

Giving the example of the state of Bihar, the statement said: "In Bihar, in particular, in the 7th phase of BSNL expansion, 1,150 2G BTS have been planned, out of which 620 BTS have been installed and working. Against 228 3G BTS in Bihar, 120 have been commissioned and become operational."