The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on September 19 has directed the telecom companies to submit the compliance reports based on the new quality of service rules. The direction by the regulator will come into effect from October 1.
The regulator, in its new order, issued a format in which the performance monitoring reports must be submitted within 15 days after each quarter's end. The report must be submitted by both wireless and wireline access service providers.
Earlier, the regulator held a meeting with the telecom service providers and extended the date of report submission to 27th August. However, the telecom companies failed to meet the deadline.
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“The authority has observed that the service providers have not submitted their input by the extended date of submission,” said the regulator in Thursday’s order.
The move by TRAI has come despite facing much criticism from telecom companies. The companies have defined the new rules that keep a check on the quality of services rendered as stringent. They have cited that the rules are going to create an additional financial burden, according to the Economic Times.
What are the new quality service rules?
Almost after a decade, on August 2, TRAI revised the standards of quality of service for access and broadband services. The regulator said in the press release that the revision in the rules is required, keeping in mind that the technology landscape of telecom networks has completely changed and moved towards converged networks.
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“To account for the quality aspects arising out of large-scale penetration of new & emerging technologies such as 4G & 5G and high-speed broadband services on fiber, the authority... has put forward a comprehensive regulatory framework which encompasses QoS benchmarks for all three services at one place,” said the regulator.
Some of the include the following:
Number 1: To enhance the QoS performance reporting, the telecom companies under the new rules will be required to publish QoS performance, against prescribed parameters, on their website.
Number 2: The authority will also measure performance against certain parameters like network availability, call drop, voice packet drop rate in uplink and downlink, etc., on cell level.
Number 3: The companies will have to display mobile coverage maps on their website along with network outages, jitter, maximum bandwidth utilisation and SMS delivery success rate etc.
Number 4: To ensure rule compliance, the regulator has increased the monetary penalty from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh. Additionally, it has introduced a graded penalty system of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for different levels of violations.
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