Quality of service (QoS) and coverage are two major concerns for telecom users across India. In fact, these issues have left every stakeholder at loggerheads with each other.
While consumers are unhappy with the services, the regulator is dissatisfied because penalising operators for poor QoS has been thwarted by a Supreme Court ruling, and the operators complain of being starved of adequate spectrum and forced to pay exorbitant amounts for the same.
However, one cannot deny that both the government and the industry have been working consistently towards resolving these issues.
Furthering its mandate to provide telecom consumers with better QoS, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has taken a number of steps to improve the situation, such as monitoring call drops through drive tests, launching an app to check internet speeds as well as an app for registering complaints against pesky calls.
The latest initiative has been the launch of a portal that enables users to measure parameters like call drops, and call and network quality of every operator in their locality. The initiative is on the same lines as that of the My Speed Data app, launched by the regulator recently. The app allows customers to check data speed on phones and share data on the portal.
Besides, it has just released a consultation paper, Review of Network Related Quality of Service Standards for Cellular Mobile Telephone Service, in which it has sought suggestions for improving QoS.
Meanwhile, the industry has been making consistent efforts to resolve issues related to limited spectrum availability and shutdown of towers by local governments. Most operators have moved to per second billing systems where call drops would become immaterial in monetary terms. In addition, some operators, like Vodafone, are trying to keep customers happy by offering free talk time against call drops on prepaid connections.
The upcoming spectrum auction will most likely resolve the issue of airwaves crunch, however, many more efforts need to be undertaken to address the existing concerns completely. There is a need for the industry and government to consider models for spectrum trading and sharing for optimal utilisation of this scarce resource. At the same time, operators have to be prepared to invest more on improving infrastructure and QoS.
