Delay in phone repairs to cost basic operators their rentals

Trai unveils new quality of service guidelines

Here is a piece of good news for landline telephone subscribers. The waiting period to get a dead telephone back to life will be drastically reduced if the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) revised regulation for quality of services (QoS) is strictly adhered to. Trai, in its new regulations, has sought fault repairing of landline connections by the next working day.

In its new regulation, Trai has asked basic service operators to conduct fault repair on the very next day in 90 per cent of the cases and in three working days in all cases. The regulator has also asked basic service providers to offer a rent rebate of seven days in cases of faults incidences pending for more than three days and less than seven days. For faults pending for more than seven days and less than 15 days, the proposed rent rebate is 15 days.

In case of faults pending for more than 15 days, the regulator has also sought a rent rebate for one month to be provided to the subscriber.

The basic service operators should refund the deposits after "closures" should be within 60 days, the regulation said.

Trai had issued a consultation paper on various issues relating to QoS on February 22, 2005, and held an open house on May 6, 2005, before issuing the regulation on July 1, 2005.

The response time to customer assistance should be within 20 seconds for 80 per cent of customers and 40 seconds for 95 per cent of instances while calls are answered electronically.

In those cases where the calls are answered by an operator, the response time should be within 60 seconds for 80 per cent and 80 seconds for 90 per cent of the cases. For the cellular operators, the response time should be within 20 seconds in 80 per cent cases and 40 seconds for 95 per cent cases for electronic assistance. In operated-assisted instances, the response time is 60 seconds in 80 per cent cases and 90 seconds for 95 per cent cases.

Hot lines

• Basic service operators must repair fault the very next day
• For faults pending for over 15 days, one-month rent rebate prescribed
• Deposits must be refunded within 60 days by basic service operators once a telephone is surrendered