Taking serious note of the deteriorating quality of mobile services throughout the country, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has pulled up Cellular Operators Association of India asking them to stop taking a plea of delay in interconnectivity and spectrum related issues as reasons for poor quality.
It is understood that operators have not taken any steps for reducing the time period in the interconnection agreements for provision of interconnection either through mutual discussions or through legal measures, TRAI said in a strongly worded letter to COAI.
TRAI's decision to question the operators on quality of service (QoS) assumes importance especially since the tariffs of mobile services have been continuously falling, while QoS not adhering to the set benchmarks may ultimately prove disastrous for the industry as a whole.
TRAI had issued a directive to all operators in November last year to ensure that the Quality of Service in their networks should be within the prescribed benchmarks by December 31, 2005.
COAI denied allegations levied by TRAI and asked it to withdraw its directive, as certain facts need to be verified as mentioned in the regulator's letter.
The service providers have also not taken any legal measure in cases where the provision of interconnection hasbeen delayed badly. Under such circumstances it is not expedient for the service providers to take the plea that unless the interconnection matters are resolved they should not be directed to ensure QoS.
As per the last survey on QoS by TRAI, most of the operators had failed to meet the prescribed benchmarks.
On the issue of spectrum, reacting to COAI's statement that lack of additional frequency was another impediment in offering quality services, TRAI said, "As such, spectrum is not an impediment in ensuring QoS."
Wherever requests for additional spectrum is pending, till the additional spectrum is made available, the service providers should increase the efficiency of spectrum utilisation through various techniques like deploying more sites, synthesised frequency hopping, multiplayer architecture, smart antennas among others to ensure that the QoS benchmark are met.
On the interconnection issue, TRAI said that COAI has not explained as to how this was affecting the QoS and this was preventing the service providers from meeting the benchmarks.
There are also other parameters such as customer helplines, billing complaints, accumulated downtime of community isolation among others, which are not connected with the issues raised by COAI.
All operators are not meeting some of these parameters in some circles, TRAI added.
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