The Hindu : 'Indian phone firms need to improve service quality'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 12, 2003

Business

Business

'Indian phone firms need to improve service quality'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI DEC. 11. The country's major telecom companies have been rated poorly as compared to their counterparts in other parts of the Asia Pacific region. An end-user survey conducted by Gartner says that the Tata managed Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) was rated significantly below the industry average for international leased lines. For local access lines, both the state run companies — Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) — were rated lowest among 20 major Asian carriers, well below the industry average.

"India still has long way to go in terms of telecom service quality," says a Gartner analyst. "The country needs to improve its service quality quickly if it wants to be the IT and outsourcing hub for multinational corporations". But there are some bright spots. "International service quality has actually improved. But it is inconsistent, often due to problems in the local access lines. Prices have also come down significantly. They are far from cheap, but they are not expensive either, even by Asian standards," says the report's co-author.

The last mile continues to be the weakest link. Both BSNL and MTNL were rated `fair and below' for reliability, performance and support for installation and repairs. To circumvent the problem, an increasing number of enterprises and international carriers are seeking out alternative carriers such as Bharti, Reliance and Tata to provide the access circuits. This will put pressure on the dominant carriers to improve their service or lose market share as alternative carriers expand their local loop.

"The best way to improve quality is competition. This is beginning to happen in international and long distance services. It will take longer to happen in the local loop due to the high investment and long rollout times. But if this market is not well-addressed, it will create an opportunity for new players to enter the market," says the report.

The findings are based on responses from 139 network managers in MNCs. They were asked to rate their service providers on a range of international services, including leased lines, frame relay, ATM and IP-VPN, as well as local access services. The evaluation is based on the following criteria: reliability, performance, support, installation and repairs, optional features and pricing.

The main regional telecom hubs in Asia lead in service quality. For local access lines, PCCW (Hong Kong) was rated highest, followed by Singapore Telecom and NTT.

For international services, Singapore Telecom was rated top in leased lines and ATM, NTT for frame relay, and KDDI for IP-VPNs.

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