The country?s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel has also topped the charts for being the ?most congested network? followed by Reliance Communications, which is the second largest mobile operator, according to the latest Point of Interconnection (PoI) congestion report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday.

The PoI signifies the ease with which a customer of one network is able to communicate with a customer of another network. ?This parameter also reflects as to how effective is the interconnection between two networks?, the regulator said.

The report clearly states that the analysis showed that the performance of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers with respect to the congestion on POIs had improved in the month of June 2008 as compared with the performance in March, 2008 while the subscriber base in this period grew by 25 million. The number of PoIs having congestion had decreased from 275 in March, 2008 to 156 in June, 2008.

The statement also noted, ?in a number of areas, the degree of congestion between the operators is alarming. In a number of cities, the level of congestion between the networks of different operators is far more than the benchmark?.

Trai has put the benchmark point of less than 0.5%. This means out of 200 calls between two operators only one call should face congestion problem. Bharti Airtel?s PoIs having congestion was 56 PoIs as of June, Reliance Communications was 22 PoIs and Vodafone?s was 19 PoIs of March.

The service providers in the past have often blamed the state-owned BSNL for the problem saying that the company hasn?t provided them enough points of interconnection, which has led to significant congestion in the network. Industry experts say that such problem can be overcome if the service providers make sufficient investment in towers and other infrastructure.

The report has shown a decline in the number of PoIs having congestion when a call is made between a private operator to BSNL/MTNL, from 118 in March, 2008 to 94 in June, 2008. During the same period POI congestion among private operators has also decreased from 157 in March, 2008 to only 62 in June, 2008.