The telecom industry has urged regulator TRAI to consider a six-month extension to the October 1 deadline it had set for implementation of new and more stringent quality of services norms.
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“While the industry is committed to partner with the authority to ensure highest quality of services (QoS) standards for the customers, the implementation will require major changes in existing processes and alignment with concerned stakeholders,” Rajan Mathews, Director General of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said in a letter to the regulator.
The revised regulation would bring a lot of changes in the measurement processes, he said. By shifting the QoS measurement and its compliance from the average basis to a percentile basis, TRAI had made the compliance requirement much more stringent than the existing requirement, Mr. Mathews pointed out.
“We earnestly request to authority to grant our members an additional time of two quarters for making the changes (development). Thus, the regulation be made effective from April 1, 2018, instead of October 1, 2017,” the industry body has said.
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New methodology
Under the new regulation, TRAI has recommended a new calculation methodology for Dropped Call Rate (DCR), which will be measured at the mobile tower level instead of telecom circle.
In addition, telcos may face a maximum penalty of ₹10 lakh if they fail to meet the benchmark for three consecutive quarters.
“The implementation of the revised measurement methodology will require building of the system and the software development, which will require significant time,” Mr. Mathews said.
In a meeting with the regulator last month, COAI had also requested the regulator to review the new requirements as “it would render entire industry non-compliant over-night.” It had pointed out that as per TRAI, around 36.9% of call drops occur due to factors that are beyond the control of telcos —such as sudden entry by consumers into lifts/basements, low battery of mobile devices and low account balance.
“Earlier QoS reporting were managed while collating the data in the excel sheets which were exchanged over the e-mails. However, the new requirement is complex in nature and the same cannot be carried out in excel files,” COAI said in the letter.
The process for calculation of dropped call rate (DCR) would also require some manual steps such as inserting DCR Codes for the cells such as unavailable cells. This would involve coordination among various stakeholders and will significantly impact on the present performance measurement, the industry body added.