Bharti Airtel claims a lack of mobile towers in India is causing an increase in call drops, following comments from the country’s telecoms minister urging operators to improve customer service.

Airtel’s Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO for India and South Asia, said the country needs “both spectrum and more sites for mobile towers”, in an interview with the Press Trust of India,

He added that there was an urgent need to “create awareness among the people and clear misinformation that they have about radiation” from mobile towers.

Addressing one particular area of India’s capital Delhi, Vittal said the company lacked around 100 towers to meet the amount of demand.

Telecoms minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said earlier this month operators needed “to walk the extra mile” and address the issue of call drops, claiming that they now had enough spectrum to provide better quality service.

Vittal said the company always strives to deliver the best possible services to consumers, and also revealed it had slashed data rates on “pay as you go” for 4G by approximately 88 per cent to RS 500 ($7.8) per GB, the same price as it charges for 3G access.

Airtel is now ramping up its 4G network after launching the service in approximately 19 cities across the country, and has recently gained approval from regulators to launch the network in Delhi and Mumbai.

In Africa, Airtel is embarking on a divestment strategy regarding its mobile towers. Just last week, the company raised $1.3 billion from the sale in five African countries, while confirming it was in the process of selling off the infrastructure in an additional six operations in the continent.