Trai mandates telcos to compensate users for outages, raise penal amount

Telecom operators will have to compensate subscribers in case of service outages for more than 24 hours at a district level under the new quality of service rules issued by the sector regulator Trai on Friday.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has also increased the penal amount to Rs 1 lakh from Rs 50,000 for failing to meet each quality benchmark under the new rules.

The regulator has introduced a graded penalty system of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for different scales of rule violations under revised regulations --"The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wirelines and Wireless) and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024".

The new norms supersede three different regulations -- Quality of Service (QoS) for basic and cellular mobile services, broadband services, and broadband wireless services.

In case of a network outage in a district, telecom operators will need to provide a rebate on rent for postpaid customers and extend the validity of connection for pre-paid customers as per the new rules.

"If any such significant network outage continues for more than 24 hours, the service provider shall provide a proportional rent rebate, as per subscribed tariff offering, for the actual number of days of service outage to postpaid subscribers registered in the affected district(s) in next billing cycle," Trai said.

The regulator will count network outage duration of more than 12 hours in a calendar day as one full day for the calculation of rent rebate or extension of validity.

"Rent rebate to postpaid customer or validity extension to prepaid customer, due delay in rectification of faults or due to significant network outage of more than 24 hours, as applicable, shall be made within one week of rectification of significant network outage," the new norms said.

However, outages due to natural calamity will not be considered for the extension of validity.

Even fixed-line service providers will have to compensate postpaid and prepaid customers if the fault in their network or service is fixed after three days.

The new rule mandates broadband service providers to activate 98 per cent of connections within 7 days of customers making payment.

Mobile service providers will need to provide service-wise (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) geospatial coverage maps on their website that will help users.

Trai's new rules will come into force after six months.