Operators fail to meet quality norms

A number of private telecom service providers along with the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), failed to meet the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) Quality of Service (QoS) benchmark on metering and billing credibility, for the quarter ending June 2004.

Among the basic service operators, BSNL failed to meet this benchmark in 6 out of 26 circles, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, North East - 1, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Chennai.

Similarly, MTNL, which operates in Delhi and Mumbai, did not meet the benchmark, which specifies that 'not more than 0.1 per cent of bills should be disputed over a billing cycle', in these circles.

Private basic service operators including Tata and Bharti (except in the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka circles) also did not meet the QoS benchmark during the quarter ending June 2004, according to the regulator.

Among the cellular mobile service providers (CMSPs), 35 CMSPs out of 78, were way above the stipulated benchmark. Tata Indicom in Mumbai had the highest percentage of billing disputes at 3.12 per cent, whereas Hutchison Essar in Andhra Pradesh had 2.13 per cent of such disputes. BSNL also had a significantly high number of billing complaints in 7 circles.

The telecom regulator had set 10 parameters to assess the quality of service offered by the telecom service providers. Out of the 10 parameters, telecom service providers improved their performance only in 3 parameters, namely: accumulated downtime of community isolation; call drop rate and percentage of complaints resolved within 4 weeks, compared to the previous quarter, according to the Trai.

BSNL received 3.9 per cent fault complaints in the Kolkata circle, which is way beyond the stipulated benchmark of less than 1 per cent.

The call-success rate of BSNL in Maharashtra and Kerala and Bharti Cellular in Maharashtra and Goa, were much below the benchmark of 99 per cent for the quarter.