Past debate on Trai's MySpeed app results not a closed issue: COAI

More than a year after contesting the validity of mobile data speeds measured by a Trai app, industry body COAI said the issue is "not closed" and that users would tend to look at alternate data testers available, all of which yield similar results.

The issue of mobile data speed measured by MySpeed app of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had been a bone of contention in the industry. Some operators, last year, had questioned the methods and results of the regulator's app that ranks telecom operators in upload and download speeds.

The Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), at that point, had raised concerns over how data download speeds and test outcome for one operator recorded by Trai's app was sharply divergent from those measured by other testing services.

Asked if the issue persisted or had been resolved to the satisfaction of operators, COAI Director General Rajan Mathews told reporters, "It is not a closed issue...if you knock off the 'outlier' then you have a fairly consistent set of parameters and rankings".

"My approach would be if the regulator does not solve it, you have other tools to solve your problem. It is not as if there are no independent measures that are telling you otherwise...Four of them are telling you otherwise," he said.

The COAI, however, does not intend to rake up the issue up again with the regulator at this point, he added.

Mathews said that the association was in favour of minimum broadband speed being pegged at up to 2 MBPS (2 mega bits per second) for 4G networks, and pointed out that the results of various speed tests showed that telecom service providers are already offering much higher speeds.

"De facto, most of our operators are providing more than 2 mbps on an average, and at peaks a lot more...However, the problem is zeroing-in on one measure for whole network, as the operators may have a mix of 2G, 3G and 4G networks," he said.