The newly appointed Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Ram Sewak Sharma, is ready to take on the might of the powerful telecom industry to ensure that mobile users get world-class service. Despite facing severe criticism for proposing compensation to users who experience call drops, Sharma is in no mood to relent.

Hitting back at operators for not doing enough, the 1978-batch IAS officer from the Jharkhand cadre said that the regulator spoke for the weakest stakeholder in the ecosystem — the consumer.

“New services are coming and we need to make sure that the quality is world-class. As the regulator we have to take care of the weakest section — the consumers — as they are the ones who do not have a voice. They are standing up against a large industry,” he told BusinessLine .

“For the benefit of consumers, we are making the whole system more transparent. We are talking of ‘quality of service’ (QoS) maps, which will allow users a geographic information system kind of map so that they will know the network capacity of an operator in a region and which operator has the best quality. This will help users to pick the right operator. Regulators in other countries, such as the UK, are doing this,” he added.  

Sharma said that TRAI itself will overhaul its existing mechanism to monitor the quality of service. “I am looking at ways to make data collection more automated. Surveys should be done on mobile systems and calls will be made to users via call centres to check QoS. We want to employ more technology to make QoS measurement scientific,” he said.  

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