The Hindu Business Line : Telecom service quality not consistent: Gartner

NEITHER the domestic nor the international long distance services market in India meets the criteria for full competition as long as customers cannot choose their international and domestic long distance carriers, according to a telecom market `health check' by research firm Gartner.

Despite this, users benefit due to strong indirect competition from mobile services, says the studyof large enterprises with extensive networking requirements.

On the whole, says the study, India has made big improvements in international and domestic long-distance services in 2004 despite a complex regulatory environment, an uneven playing field and limited competition.

"The biggest improvement was in voice services. Prices have dropped dramatically to the point where India is competitive compared with developed markets. Service quality, a major problem in the past, has also improved significantly, but it's not consistent enough for large companies," said Ms Kobita Desai, Principal Analyst (Telecom), Gartner.

Service quality still lags behind many other countries, including some developing markets. This problem is particularly evident in data services, whose service quality has been diminished by problems in the last mile. India needs to quickly address this problem because reliability is more important than low prices, especially for foreign companies outsourcing their IT operations to India. In the evaluation, Gartner rated domestic long distance and international services for both voice and data. Data includes leased lines, frame relay, ATM, IP-VPN (Internet protocol-virtual private network) and IP transit. A rating is assigned to each service using the following scheme — full competition, limited competition, and no competition.

The services that showed the most progress are leased lines. There is a bigger choice of service providers and prices dropped significantly as a result of more fibre capacity and competition. Although IP-VPN services came in late, it's picking up as more carriers roll out the service for domestic and international use. Competition is setting in and IP-VPN is likely to emerge as the main alternative to leased lines in the future.

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