The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed telecom service providers (TSPs) to take urgent steps to demonstrate visible improvement in the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience by consumers. It has asked telcos to analyse the issue of call muting and one-way speech and take corrective action on priority. While rolling out 5G network, TSPs should ensure that there is least disturbance or degradation of QoS of existing telecom services.
TRAI called a meeting with major telecom operators on February 17, 2023, to review the issues related to the quality of telecom services being faced by consumers and the menace of unsolicited commercial communications (UCC). During the meeting, TRAI informed that it is closely monitoring the incidences of long-duration network outages. Such outages adversely affect QoS and consumer experience. The regulator has asked all telcos to report such outages to TRAI in any district or state. TRAI may consider bringing suitable regulation in this regard, if required.
Further, TRAI also asked TSPs to plan and implement systems for online data collection for QoS benchmarks and their processing to generate performance reports with license service area, state level or lower granularity. This will simplify the process of QoS performance reporting by TSPs and thereby reduce in compliance burden.
According to TRAI, considering the scale and size of networks being set up for the rollout of 5G services and important use cases being developed by different industry verticals, it has asked TSPs to implement systems for internal QoS monitoring on a 24*7 and 360-degree basis. The exploitation of network features as per standard and the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for QoS monitoring and management was also suggested.
In addition, TRAI has also asked TSPs to implement two directions issued by TRAI on February 16, 2023, in a time-bound manner. These two directions have been issued to curb the misuse of headers and message templates of principal entities by some telemarketers and also the messages from unauthorised or unregistered telemarketers, including telemarketers using telephone numbers.
