On 18 August 2017, the TRAI released the above amendment, pursuant to a public consultation on Quality of Service (“QoS”) conducted in August 2016, regarding the issues being faced by all stakeholders in the Cellular Mobile Telephone Service. In response to the suggestions received from the stakeholders, the TRAI has recommended the following changes in the mechanisms adopted to ensure QoS standards:
- A revised methodology for determining the Drop Call Rate (DCR), whereby the previously appearing anomaly of bad cells getting averaged out with the good performing ones, will be removed. Now, the DoT will be able to identify the specific Cells (Service Providers) in an area who are not meeting the QoS standards, rather than them getting hidden via averaging.
- A revision of the assessment methodology, by taking a step towards technology agnostic performance measurement.
- Defining the network QoS parameters and standards for VoLTE services.
- The introduction of graded financial disincentives/penalties in case service providers fails to perform, variable on the basis of the amount of deviation from the QoS parameters. This will amount to a total of INR 5,00,000/- (Rupees Five Lakhs) for anyone parameter breach.
These regulations will be in effect from 1 October 2017. Source: http://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Fifth%20Amd_QOS_Reg_18082017.pdf