Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released revised regulations namely ‘The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wirelines and Wireless) and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024 (06 of 2024)’. These regulations are applicable for access (fixed and mobile) and broadband services.

Earlier, TRAI had issued three different regulations prescribing standards of quality of service (QoS), for basic and cellular mobile services, broadband services, and broadband wireless services. The new regulations shall supersede above referred three regulations.

The revised regulations have been finalised after following a detailed consultative process through a consultation paper on ‘Review of Quality-of-Service Standards for Access Services (Wireless and Wireline) and Broadband (Wireless and Wireline) Services’ issued on August 18, 2023 inviting comments from the stakeholders. An open house discussion (OHD) was held with the stakeholders on April 9, 2024 where in representatives from stakeholders and consumer forums shared their views on different provisions of the regulations.

Some of the salient features of the regulations include:

  • To mandate service providers to display technology (2G/3G/4G/5G) wise mobile coverage maps on their website, to enable consumers to make informed decisions.
  • To bring transparency in QoS performance reporting, the service providers have been mandated to publish QoS performance, against prescribed parameters, on their website.
  • To consider the performance requirement of new emerging applications, the benchmark for Latency parameter has been aligned with global standards and new parameters for Jitter and Packet drop rate have been introduced.
  • To enable timely redressal of network issues by the service providers, QoS performance of mobile service shall now be monitored on monthly instead of quarterly basis. However, for smooth transition to monthly reporting, service providers have been given six months’ time from the effective date of the regulation.
  • To have insight of performance at granular level, the authority has decided to collect performance against certain parameters like network availability, call drop, voice packet drop rate in uplink and downlink, etc on Cell level.
  • To achieve adoption of uniform methodology by different service providers while measuring and reporting the performance, a detailed and unambiguous measurement methodology has been prescribed in the regulation.
  • To tighten the benchmarks for some key parameters like network availability (cumulative downtime and worst affected cells due to downtime), call drop rate, packet drop rate, latency etc. in a graded manner over a time frame of six months to two and half years to enable service providers to upgrade their networks, wherever needed.
  • In addition to requirement for display of mobile coverage map, new parameters like reporting of significant network outages, jitter, maximum bandwidth utilisation between radio and core network during busy hour and SMS delivery success rate etc. have been introduced.
  • To upgrade their system for online monitoring and reporting of QoS performance.
  • To adopt six sigma quality management plan to achieve continuous improvement in the quality of services.
  • In order to achieve time bound action on QoS related issues and early resolution of non-compliant QoS performance in the network, graded financial disincentives, increasing with continued non-compliance, have been introduced for all services.

These regulations shall come into force with effect from October 1, 2024.