TRAI issues consultation paper on quality

NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a consultation paper on Thursday, to revamp the quality of service parameters of basic service (wireline) and cellular mobile telephone service.

Ensuring quality of service and improving poor quality of service are the two main objectives behind revamping. The consultation paper focuses on the review of the existing quality of service parameters and its measurement.

TRAI has proposed the benchmark for the parameter of call drop to be revised, from existing less than 3 per cent to less than or equal to 2 per cent, which implies that out of 100 calls, not more than 2 calls should be dropped. A new parameter, 'worst-affected cells having more than 3 per cent call drop rates', is proposed to assess base transceiver stations (BTS) with excessive call drops.

Also, a new parameter has been proposed for metering and billing of pre-paid customers. Currently, only post-paid customers' billing credibility is assessed through QoS regulations.

TRAI has also taken up the issue of response time for assistance to customers, apart from proposing a benchmark for basic services (wireline).

According to the latest proposal, TRAI wants all the service providers to have uniform record keeping procedures and a system of internal auditing of QoS by service providers.

It has benchmarked the performance of cellular mobile service providers by introducing two indexes, one related to network parameters - Network Service Quality Index and Customer Service Quality Index (CSQI). A 10-point score for evaluating the performance against each parameter and equal weight age for each parameter have been proposed.

TRAI has also envisaged fines to enforce quality of service.