Last week Cellular Operators Association of India(COAI) sought TRAI’s help in assessing the claim made by network operators that sub-standard quality chipsets like MediaTek are slowing down networks. MediaTek chipsets are supposedly slowing down 4G LTE network.
COAI has highlighted smartphones like Lenovo A7000 and K4 Note, Xiaomi Redmi 3S and Note 3, Motorola Moto G4, Oppo A35, Micromax Canvas E451 and Intex Aqua Craze that are causing this slowdown.
“It was observed that placing a SIM (which has only 4G LTE capability) in the number 2 slot (2G-only) significantly deteriorates the throughput of any other operator’s 4G SIM present in the main slot, by as much as 40 percent,” said Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI.
Xiaomi denies claims by COAI
COAI wants thorough testing of such chipsets and devices on India networks and environment to see if they’re causing any troubles. However, Xiaomi has come out with a statement citing that none of this is true.
“The analysis in the report specifically points out a degradation in network quality of service (QoS) for handsets that have a MediaTek chipset. All our smartphones are shipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors in India and are optimised for India-specific bands for the most efficient usage of 4G/LTE,” reports IANS.
Around two years back, Xiaomi had been denied to sell smartphones with MediaTek processors, and in fact, Xiaomi is developing in-house chipset Surge S1 to install in its smartphones.
Other manufacturers have not come out with any statement about such claims yet. TRAI also hasn’t communicated about any such thing to any manufacturer yet. According to COAI, more than 35% of the smartphones in India have MediaTek chipset installed.
Other manufacturers that need to respond to COAI have to also test the network on their smartphones first, and if needed then send an OTA update to these smartphones. Another possibility could be launching a single-SIM version of these smartphones, but a dial-SIM version sells more.
Having said that, TRAI should release a statement to all manufacturers to test the network on their smartphones before launching them in India. Irrespective of the chipset, other internals should also be optimised for Indian network to ensure 4G speeds are not hampered.
