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New Delhi: Telecom operators have expressed concern over the new quality of service (QoS) norms introduced by regulator Trai, terming them too stringent as the proposed benchmarks will significantly increase the compliance as well as cost burden on the industry while there won’t be commensurate benefits for the customers.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday announced new QoS rules, which will come into effect from October 1. The regulator has not only made the rules more stringent but also directs telcos to compensate consumers in case the network outage is not resolved in a particular time frame.
Among the changes, the new rules make reporting on QoS benchmarks on monthly basis, as against the current norm of quarterly reporting while the performance will be tracked to a cell level as against the current practise of base station level reporting.
“The industry expresses concern over the proposed regulations, which not only tighten benchmarks but also shift from quarterly to monthly reporting and site to cell level reporting in many cases,” Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said. The industry association represents all the three private telecom operators –Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
The association said the QoS parameters prescribed in the new regulations have not been introduced by any other regulator in other similar economies. “These changes are expected to significantly increase the compliance as well as the cost burden on telecom operators, and without commensurate benefits for the customers,” COAI added.
The telcos, however, plan to engage with the regulator to sort out issues surrounding QoS.
“While we are disappointed with the stringency of these new regulations, we remain committed to engaging constructively with Trai on QoS-related matters,” COAI added.
As per Trai, in case of a network outage in a district for mobile services for more than 24 hours, telcos will need to provide a rebate on rent for postpaid customers and extend the validity of connection for pre-paid customers by equal number of affected days,
For fixed-line services, users will have to be compensated if the fault in their network or service is repaired after three days.
To achieve time bound action on quality of service (QoS) related issues the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Friday increased the financial penalty to Rs 1 lakh from Rs 50,000 earlier for not meeting the benchmarks. The regulator has also introduced a graded penalty system of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for different scales of rule violations under revised regulations, which will come into effect from October 1.
The telcos said while Trai has tightened the QoS benchmarks over the years, the ground realities remain unchanged. For instance, telcos said they still grapple with right of way (RoW) issues when acquiring permissions for infrastructure deployment in public and private land for the installation of cell towers and fiber-optic cables.
“The situation is further aggravated due to additional requirement of street furniture for the 5G networks,” the COAI said.
Moreover, interference from various sources, such as other wireless devices and electromagnetic interference, degrade signal quality and network performance. Further, illegal boosters and repeaters used by unauthorised agents, as well as the cases of theft of equipment are also external factors which, nevertheless, impact the QoS. “TSPs have limited control over these external sources which adversely impact the quality of services,” the industry body highlighted.
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