Welcome Guest Login | Register | Site Map | | Make TelecomTiger my homepage     
Telecom News
Enterprise |  Policy & Regulation |  Mobiles & Tabs |  Corporate |  VAS |  People Movement  |  Technology  |  LTE
Policy & Regulation
TRAI slaps fine on Jio, Airtel, others for not meeting service quality norms in March quarter
TT Correspondent |  |  10 Sep 2018

Regulator TRAI has imposed penalties on major telecom operators, including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular (now merged), for slipping on various service quality benchmarks for the March quarter, according to multiple sources. The fines cover various parameters and service areas, and all the operators are in the process of making the payment, sources told.

About Rs 34 lakh fine has been imposed for March 2018 quarter on Reliance Jio, the aggressive player whose offerings since 2016 have shaken the market and triggered a bruising tariff war among operators.

The penalty on the Mukesh Ambani-led firm is on account of Trai-defined service quality parameters, including Point of Interconnect congestion, accessibility of call centres or customer care, and percentage of calls answered by operators (voice to voice) in a set timeframe.

An e-mail sent to Reliance Jio seeking its response on the penalty did not elicit a response.

Maintaining its watch on service quality in the sector, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had tightened the rules and asked players to abide by its new quality of service (QoS) benchmarks from October 1, 2017.

The latest assessment reflects how the operators have fared between January and March 2018 on Trai's new service quality benchmarks.

Bharti Airtel -- which was the largest telecom operator in the country till the merger of Vodafone and Idea Cellular shuffled the pecking order late last month -- has been fined to the tune of about Rs 11 lakh for the three months to March, as per sources.

Its penalties are on account of norms relating to metering and billing (postpaid), accessibility of call centre and customer care, percentage of calls answered by operators within defined timeframe parameters.

The fine imposed on Idea Cellular is about Rs 12.5 lakh for the March quarter.

The penalties pertain to various circles on parametres like call drops, percentage of calls answered by operators within a set timeframe, and requests for closure of services complied within seven days.

In case of Vodafone, the March quarter penalties stood at only about Rs 4 lakh on issues like metering and billing (pre-paid), time taken to comply with request for termination or closure of service, and percentage of calls answered by operators within a timeframe.

While Bharti Airtel declined to comment, Idea Cellular and Vodafone did not respond to e-mails queries on the issue.

Trai Chairman R S Sharma had earlier told that the regulator is in the final stage of imposing penalty on operators which have not met service quality norms for the March quarter, but had not given details.

Trai has been maintaining that it does not wish to name specific operators or penalties slapped on them for not meeting the service quality criteria. Accordingly, it has never published this information either on its website or through a statement.

As per the new quality of service benchmarks of Trai, now call drops are measured at mobile tower level instead of telecom circle level. Trai was of the view that average calculated at circle level may hide many issues.

(Reported PTI)

    
Other Stories in this Section
 mail this article    print this article    Show and Post comment
10 Sep 2018(IST)  
Whitepaper
Maintain Business Continuity with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
It is a virtual chassis solution where a pair of ASR 9000 routers acts as a single device by maintaining a single contr...read more
Simplify Your Network with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
With the new Cisco Network Virtualization (nV) technology in the Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, se...read more
Cisco Small Cell Solution: Reduce Costs, Improve Coverage
It is designed to address the challenge of mobile service coverage and to expand network capacity...read more