Trai pulls up six firms for clogging

Telecom firms say BSNL's failure to ensure timely interconnect primary reason for congestion.

Confronted with increasing congestion in the telecom networks of operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today issued show-cause notices to six mobile service providers "" Bharti, Reliance Infocomm, Reliance Telecom, BPL Mobile and Spice Communication.

While clarifying that all mobile operators in the country had failed to meet the benchmarks specified by it, Trai said notices were being issued only to those in whose networks congestion had increased in the September-December period last year. In case of other service providers, there had been no deterioration during this period, it said.

The benchmark prescribed by Trai for Point of Interconnect (POI) congestion between the networks of two operators is less than 0.5 per cent.

Trai said despite issuing directions to all cellular mobile service providers to comply with the quality of service parameters, including the level of POI congestion, by December 31, 2005, there had been an acute worsening of the problem.

"In September, there were 237 POIs having congestion above 5 per cent and this increased to 249 in December 2005. It was also noticed that in some places, the level of congestion of some operators was in the range of 80 to 95 per cent. This means that out of every 100 calls, 80-90 calls fail, leading to total chaos in inter-network communications and heavy customer dissatisfaction and almost the collapse of the service," the Trai said.

Private operators, however, blamed BSNL and said the failure of the PSU to ensure timely interconnection was the primary reason for the increase in congestion.

Countering this argument, Trai said it was the responsibility of operators to "take necessary action for timely augmentation of POIs through mutual discussions or through legal measures. When mutual discussions fail, operators should have approached the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Authority for dispute resolution".

Meanwhile, the regulator has also relaxed the mandatory reporting requirement of seven days for tariff plans offered by telecom operators to bulk customers. Trai said the ceiling of 25 tariff plans would also not be applicable to schemes offered to bulk customers.