Trai issues consultation paper to improve network quality

This comes as most of the telcos fail to keep call drop rates within 2% benchmark across major cities

In a bid to curb call drop rates and improve network quality, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday came out with a new consultation paper, which seeks to rework the process of assessing quality of service provided by the telecom companies.

Through the consultation paper, Trai is looking to re-define parameters and benchmarks that are used to measure quality of service (QoS). The regulatory body also explored the idea of monitoring the benchmarks for various parameters at sub-service area level so as to zero down on problem areas.

This comes as most of the telcos fail to keep call drop rates within 2 per cent benchmark across major cities, as per the results of the independent test drives conducted by Trai. However, when assessed for licensed service areas, which are spread over much larger area than just one city, the telecom players' have been able to meet the benchmarks.

 

"While on one hand the service providers are mostly meeting the benchmark for most of the QoS parameters, because of averaging the performance for the entire service area, on the other hand a large number of consumers have been complaining because of poor quality of experience (QoE)," said the consultation paper. "The performance so assessed gives only an overall performance of the service area. There could be many areas and localities within the service area where the QoS could be poor."

"The issue is whether the benchmarks for various parameters be mandated for sub-service area wise monitoring so that the problem areas could be identified," it said.

The authority has sought the views of the stakeholders on how to bring about changes in the present benchmarks and add relevant parameters for 4G networks.The paper said the QoS parameters and benchmark should be technology agnostic (2G/ 3G/ 4G/ BWA), so that they could be measured and reported irrespective of the technology deployed.

Even as the TSPs are generally meeting the overall call drop rates benchmark, the regulator mooted another variant to analyse call drops through the analysis of Call Data Records (CDR) in the billing system.

"Though such short durations calls do not necessarily point to a call drop rate, it will give an indication of the normal trend of call drop as experienced by the consumer," the paper said. "Through data analytics of the CDR, it may be statistically possible to identify call drop rate. For example, every CDR captures at the end of call - cell id, the signal level, voice quality and various other parameters of the BTS at the end of the call."

The consultation paper asked for stakeholders' comments on the appropriate way to calculate call drop rates through metadata analysis of call data records.

In addition, to measure the call drop rate, TRAI asked the stakeholder whether it should make it mandatory for TSPs to set the Radio Link Time-Out (RLT) parameter. RLT is the threshold time period before a call is dropped due to poor connectivity. There have been concerns about telecom players using RLT technology to mask the call drop rate.

Trai also sought comments on the mechanism of imposing of graded financial disincentives, so that in the case of very poor performance the financial disincentive could be very stringent.

Another way to calculate the QoE as perceived by the consumer, that Trai explored in the paper, was to measure the Customer Service Quality Index through consumer survey. The survey may include parameters like Metering and billing credibility for post paid and pre-paid connections, Resolution of billing or charging complaints and Accessibility of customer care centers and Time taken for refund of deposits after closure among others.

Trai has asked the stakeholders to submit their comments by August 26, 2016 and counter comments by September 2, 2016.