OHD on Consultation Paper on review of Quality-of-Service standards held

Discussions are in progress on the Consultation Paper on Review of Quality-of-Service Standards for Access Services (Wireless and Wireline) and Broadband Services (Wireless and Wireline)” released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on August 18, 2023.

COAI has protested that the quality of services is not solely determined by the services provided by the telcos. Other factors such as device ecosystem, apps, the quantum of spectrum available, backhaul, and right-of-way issues all come into play. The regulator has not even considered these.

Also, QoS improvement is a way of life for the telcos. It is not prudent to change the guidelines or impose stiff penalties as proposed in the draft regulations.

The telcos have also seen no meaning in monthly reporting of QoS data. It only increases the paper load for the telcos with no end result in improving QoS.

However, a consumer advocacy lawyer present in the discussions said telcos and their associations were extraordinarily active in opposing every chapter of the regulations, adding that they are opposing an update to regulations set in the 2G era too.

TRAI has also proposed revising the benchmark of network downtime to a cell level in place of the current base station (BTS) level to have a granular view of network availability. For broadband services, the QoS benchmark for the latency parameter has been proposed to be less than 100 milliseconds (ms) from the present 250 ms.

The last date for receiving comments is April 22.

CT Bureau