Trai to bring new quality norms for cellular services soon

Decision will come in form of a regulation or order by Trai, says R S Sharma

Telecom regulator Trai on thursday said it will bring out in the next few weeks its order on the revised quality of service norms for mobile services, including benchmarks for newer technologies like VoLTE.

"On quality of service norms and parameters, on how to redefine them, what should be the values, the granularity... should the call quality be measured at the level of service area, or towers, or district... On all those issues, we had held consultations and we will take a decision in a few weeks," Trai Chairman R S Sharma said.

Sharma, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci event, said the decision will come in the form of a regulation or order by Trai.

Elaborating on the review of service quality norms, he said new standards like VoLTE have come up whose parameters have to be mapped equivalent to parameters of other technologies.

"Interestingly, new technologies have come like VoLTE which have different names for some parameters. So, we have to map them so that the service quality parametres... Are equivalent for all technologies," he said.

Tightening the noose around mobile operators over call drops, Trai last year had issued a consultation paper where it proposed stricter quality norms for local areas and graded financial disincentives for poor services.

The final views of the regulator on this consultation paper are expected now.

Asked about the regulator's views on Jio's new offer for its Prime members, which promises three months of complimentary service on the first recharge of Rs 303 and above, Sharma declined to comment, saying, "I have not seen it."

"There are many tariffs that are filed. Each telecom service provider files multiple tariff plans," he said.

On the issue of regulation of Internet-based call and messaging applications termed 'Over The Top' services, Sharma noted that the regulator had previously initiated consultation on the same.

"We have not done any fresh consultation. The consultation we had done, at that time, was looking at the regulatory imbalance between the OTT players and telecom service providers... After that, issues like Net neutrality and differential pricing came up," he said, adding that the authority is yet to take view on the OTT issue.

On TDSAT's direction to the regulator to re-examine issues relating to the approval that was granted to Jio on free offers, Sharma said Trai has responded to TDSAT.