The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the findings of its Independent Drive Test (IDT) carried out in Namchi and Gyalshing districts of Sikkim, which fall under the West Bengal Licensed Service Area (LSA). The tests were conducted in December 2025 to check the actual quality of mobile services available to users in everyday conditions. According to the report, the drive tests were carried out between December 2 and December 6, 2025, under the supervision of the TRAI Regional Office in Kolkata. The assessment covered about 294.6 kilometres of city routes, 10 important hotspot locations, and around 2 kilometres of walk tests. The purpose was to understand how mobile networks perform in real situations such as residential areas, offices, tourist locations, hospitals, courts, and busy public places.
TRAI teams tested 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G services of all major telecom service providers. For voice services, key indicators such as call setup success rate, call setup time, drop call rate, call silence, speech quality and coverage were examined. For data services, download and upload speeds, latency, jitter, packet drop rate and video streaming delay were measured.The results show that call setup success rates were high for Airtel and Reliance Jio, while BSNL and Vodafone Idea recorded lower figures in comparison. Drop call rates were lowest for Airtel and Jio, but were significantly higher for BSNL and Vodafone Idea. In terms of call quality, measured through Mean Opinion Score (MOS), Jio reported the highest average score, followed by Vodafone Idea and Airtel.Data performance showed that 5G services delivered the fastest speeds overall. Reliance Jio recorded the highest average download and upload speeds during the tests, especially at hotspot locations. Airtel also showed stable performance, while BSNL and Vodafone Idea lagged behind in both download and upload speeds. Latency levels for all operators remained within a similar range, with Jio showing slightly better response times.
The assessment covered several towns and villages including Melli, Jorethang, Sumbuk, Nayabazar Namchi, Legship, Gyalshing, Darap, Tashiding, Kewzing, Barfung, Kitam and surrounding areas. Static tests were conducted at important public places such as district offices, courts, hospitals, taxi stands, monasteries and tourist spots. Walk tests were carried out at popular locations like Buddha Park in Ravangla, Siddheshwar Dham in Namchi and the Skywalk at Pelling. TRAI noted that poor signal strength was still observed across a significant portion of the test routes for both voice and data services, indicating the need for network improvement, especially in hilly and remote areas.