The Hindu Business Line : TRAI relaxes quality benchmarks

WITH most fixed line operators not meeting the prescribed quality of service standards, the TRAI today relaxed the quality benchmarks across various parameters including fault incidence and call completion rate.

The telecom regulator said that the basic phone services providers across the country continued to dish out poor services affecting millions of customers.

In a statement, it said: "TRAI has been carrying out regular reviews of the status of quality of service of the networks of all operators.

The performance was found to be very poor for basic service networks, especially the ones that were predominantly wire line networks."

It added: "In the case of cellular operators, while about 75 per cent of the operators were meeting most of the parameters, there was still the problem of several other parameters not being met."

The quality norms were supposed to be met by end of 2004. TRAI has now extended the time till 2007 with relaxed benchmarks.

For instance, until now the call completion rate to be adhered to by a fixed line operator was more than 65 per cent. This has been brought down to 55 per cent.

TRAI said that after discussing with operators, it became quite evident that in the case of wire line basic operators, the network conditions were very poor and the possibility of meeting these targets within the stipulated timeframe was not feasible since extensive rehabilitation work was required. In the case of cellular networks, it was found that while an extensive attempt had been made to cover all relevant parameters and lay down benchmarks for them in the current regulation, certain important parameters were inadvertently left out and some other parameters - which had become unimportant as the result of technological developments - remained.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
CII talent hunt for IT students

Stake dilution for knowhow acquisition — Tata Tele in talks with SK Telecom

VSNL close to tying up S. Africa telecom deal — Completes acquisition of Tyco Global

TRAI relaxes quality benchmarks

TRAI calls for sops to boost rural telephony

iSoft doubles Chennai team

Congruent closes second US deal

HCL Tech to join Power.org

Satyam meet in Trinidad

Xoriant plans $12-m expansion