Telecom firms fail quality norms

Leading telecom service providers, like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Reliance and Bharti have failed to measure up to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai's) standards on call success and drop rates in some circles.

According to the quality of service survey conducted by the telecom regulator for the quarter ending September, the performance of these service providers deteriorated in some circles compared to the previous quarter.

"The success rate for Bharti Cellular in Maharashtra and Goa and BSNL in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka were below the 90 per cent compared to the benchmark of 99 per cent set by Trai," the survey said.

It added that 51 service providers had fully met the benchmark for the call success rate, and in call drop rate performance, only Reliance and BSNL were below the mark. While Reliance failed to meet the benchmark in Bihar, BSNL's performance was below par in Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

The survey painted a grim picture regarding billing problems, network congestion and poor customer care.

Billing complaints per 100 bills issued were found to be within norms for 49 operators only. The worst offenders were Hutchison Essar in Uttar Pradesh (East) and Andhra Pradesh, Tata Telecom in Mumbai and Maharashtra and BSNL in Punjab, Karnataka, Kolkata, Maharashtra and Kerala.

The mobile operators had not been able to expand their network and related infrastructure like call centres at the pace at which they were increasing the subscriber base, the survey said.

It added that this had resulted in an increase in network congestion, billing problems and deterioration in the performance of customer care centres.

The authority had called senior management of mobile service operators for discussions. The points emerging from these discussions have been taken note of and actions have been initiated. This include auditing of the billing systems of service providers, monitoring the action plan for improving performance of individual operators.

The authority is now following this up with individual operator-level discussions.