In response to an order issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regarding submission of quality of service (QoS) data, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has noted that it would be difficult for telecom operators to provide such data state-wise or district-wise as it comes under different jurisdictions for different licensed service areas (LSA). Further, COAI has reiterated there will be difficulties in aggregation and coordination of data as it will require a new ID system set up that will entail cost and time.
That said, the carriers also want the government to set aside mid band 6 GHz spectrum for them, saying it is critical for proliferation of 5G services, and delicensing the spectrum would lead to loss to exchequer and will also impact quality and cost of next generation services. Meanwhile, tech companies have also laid claim to the band, saying it can be used to propagate alternative unlicensed technologies such as Wi-Fi 6, which can support 5G-like speeds of nearly 10 Gbps.
In an attempt to check deteriorating QoS, particularly call drops, TRAI has asked the telecom operators to submit data around network outages in any district or state. The regulator is also considering bringing suitable regulations in this regard. Currently, QoS parameters are checked LSA-wise and therefore, telcos submit data LSA-wise. However, the authority feels that the current system lacks efficiency and on various occasions the outages at any particular district or area go unnoticed because the down time is averaged out in the whole LSA data. To check that, TRAI suggested that telcos should plan and implement systems for online data collection for QoS benchmarks and their processing to generate performance reports with LSA, state level or lower granularity.
