TRAI to review telecom service quality

To improve quality of telecom services and make tariff plans easier to understand, telecom regulator TRAI will switch to a quarterly audit of Quality of Service, instead of annually now.

"From July this year, we shall be doing quarterly audit. Till now, every three months the service providers submit data on defined parameters of Quality of Service but audit was done annually by TRAI," a senior TRAI official said.

This will certainly put pressure on service providers to keep upgrading their networks constantly and swiftly redress subscriber complaints. On information relating to tariff plans, TRAI is seeking to simplify the tariff plan literature offered by operators, as subscribers do not get the right kind of information about hidden costs and benefits of different plans.

The regulator had also convened a meeting of service providers and consumer groups last month and had sought their views on improving customer care and Quality of Services. Officials said that lobby groups COAI and AUSPI, representing the two telecom technology platforms GSM and CDMA, respectively, have submitted the "Citizen's Charter" suggesting imrpoving transparency in information dissemination and TRAI would decide on the same at the earliest.

"We have received the charter just two days ago. we will surely see whether the charter has any tangible benefits for the subscribers and accordingly will take a decision," the official added.

Meanwhile, the regulator will be launching web-based 'Telecom Consumer Grievances Monitoring System' by July 15, enabling the subscribers to lodge their complaints and monitor their redressal on web through internet.

The TRAI has been receiving complaints of poor quality of services and weak complaint redressal mechanism, causing lot of hardships to the subscribers.

"Our growth in mobile subscriber addition may be the fastest in the world at an average of adding 15-20 million every month but unfortunately customer care and complaint redressal system is very poor," the official said, adding that this will now be the focus of the TRAI. On the web-based grievance system, officials said it is ready and final testing is being done.