Submit service quality report for each state, union territory: TRAI to telcos

Taking a serious note of complaints related to call drops and service quality issues, regulator TRAI on Friday directed telecom service providers to submit service quality reports for each state and union territory.

Now, telcos will have to report more granular data that will help identify patchy networks and problem areas.

In another move to cheer telecom consumers, the regulator has issued draft regulation on ‘Quality of Service (Code of Practice for Metering and Billing Accuracy) Regulations, 2023’ and review of draft guidelines.

TRAI said in a statement that accuracy of metering and billing of telecom services has been a major focus of the regulator to protect the interest of consumers.

Meanwhile, it has also issued instructions to “all telecom service providers to submit Quality of Service (QoS) reports for each State and Union Territory (UT).”

Last week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority India (TRAI) held a review meeting on call drops with telecom companies where it clarified that companies will have to report call drops and outage data at the state level as well.

TRAI also directed the companies to take immediate steps to “demonstrate visible improvement” in the quality of service and connectivity experience for consumers across the country.

In the last meeting, the regulator informed that more stringent service parameters are in view when it comes to call quality standards, and a consultation process will be initiated by TRAI in the coming months.

TRAI on Friday said that for optimal analysis of the quality of service being provided by telecom companies, it is necessary to submit state and union territory-wise reports for QoS parameters. They will have to submit the data on a quarterly basis from March 2023 quarter.

It added that this will help the concerned State/UT Governments to improve the QoS of the service providers in the State/UT, as and when required.

“LSA (License Service Area) wise data, as currently being submitted through various performance monitoring reports, will continue to be submitted as per the schedule defined in the regulation,” it added.

This means that the data reported from here on will be more detailed and detailed (for 29 States and Union Territories) as compared to the current practice of reporting data at the level of Licensed Service Areas (22 LSAs in all) and Average on quarterly basis.

TRAI believes that state-level reporting will ensure that problem areas and poor networks in certain states, especially in the North-East, can be clearly identified and corrective action can be taken by the players .

Currently, localized problem areas are not clearly visible on the radar, as the reporting structure for the data is based on LSAs (in some cases a larger reporting area), that too on average.

While such detailed reporting (at the state level) will start immediately, it will be made part of the QoS norms, and it will take some time to implement financial deterrence, TRAI chairman PD Vaghela said last week.

In fact, earlier this week, mobile operators’ body COAI had said that reporting of state-wise call drop data involves several administrative and execution “difficulties” at the ground level, and that reporting should continue at the LSA level.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)