Indian mobile operators are responding to pressure from the government to address the issue of frequent call drops.
Bharti Airtel will implement per-second billing for all its prepaid customers, India's Economic Timesreported. Customers will still be able to opt for discount packages at per-second or per-minute rates.
While the large majority of the operator's prepaid customers are already on per-second plans, the company will now move to ensure its entire customer base is.
Telecom secretary Rakesh Garg recently said the government will be investigating whether operators may in some cases have a financial incentive to intentionally drop calls if they are billing on per-minute rates.
The move by Airtel to ensure all base rates are per-second based may be an attempt to ensure the government that this is not occurring.
Rival operator Aircel meanwhile plans to complete a project add 13,000 new 2G, 3G and 4G cell sites across the country by December, according to a separate report.
The company has already rolled out nearly 7,400 sites this year and plans to deploy the remaining sites by year-end.
The government recently called on all the nation's mobile operators to invest in network capacity to address the call drop issue.