Trai to put up new norms for quality of service

New parameters should be announced within a month, says Trai Chairman Rahul Khullar

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) would soon put in place a service quality benchmark for mobile operators, Trai Chairman Rahul Khullar said here on Wednesday. Non-adherence to the new quality standards, which would be announced in a month, would lead to penal action against mobile operators, he added.

The problem of call drops has become more severe in the recent past. Rakesh Garg, secretary, Department of Telecommunications, had on Monday called a meeting of all operators in this regard.

Trai has defined quality of service benchmarks for telecom operators. These include benchmarks for call drops, billing, complaint redressal time and time taken to attend customer calls, among others.

Trai measures performance of operators on the basis of 10 parameters. Service providers are penalised up to Rs 10 lakh for each parameter furnished incorrectly in their report submitted to the regulator. It starts with Rs 50,000 fine for first non-compliance and Rs 1 lakh for each subsequent non-compliance.

“The problem of call drops is seen more in metros and less in smaller towns. If towers in places like Noida are switched off, how are you going to have wireless communication? This is what we have also mentioned in our broadband paper,” Khullar added.

He refused any comments on net neutrality issues.