Trai Test: Most telecom firms' services poor

Poor quality of service continues to plague the telecom sector with 57% operators nationwide failing to meet the benchmark across all parameters set by telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai).

A Trai survey said on an all India basis, 57% of the operators do not meet the benchmark criteria for all the parameters taken together.

On the overall customer satisfaction level, where the benchmark is over 95%, the perception is below the benchmark in all the circles except in Kerala, where all the 6 operators meet the benchmark.

The poorest performance range amongst all the operators in a circle is noticed in Gujarat, Assam, Bihar, North-East and Orissa circles.

In the network performance criteria where the benchmark is over 95%, the customer perception of the parameter network performance is poor as only 12 out of 119 licensees surveyed meet the benchmark. In Metro, A and C circles none of the operators is meeting the benchmark. In B Circle all the operators surveyed in Kerala and Punjab meet the benchmark of over 95%.

The circles where the lowest performance noticed is in Bihar, Orissa, Gujarat, North East and in Jammu and Kashmir.

On billing, where the benchmark is over 90%, in the case of post-payment segment, overall 63.87% of the operators achieved the satisfaction level of more than 90% and in the pre-paid segment the number of operators who achieved the level were 85.71%.

The worst performance in respect of post-payment is in the Delhi and Assam circles.