The Hindu : Business : Telecom authority's bid to improve mobile services

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 01, 2004

Business

Business

Telecom authority's bid to improve mobile services

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, NOV. 30. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has started engaging mobile phone companies on a one-to-one basis to persuade them to improve their services. Several companies have not expanded their network and related infrastructure at the pace at which they are increasing the subscriber base, resulting in high network congestion, billing problems and deterioration in the performance of customer care centres. After holding a joint meeting with senior management of mobile service companies, the TRAI is holding individual operator level discussions to implement the points that have emerged from the earlier parleys. They include auditing of the billing systems of service providers and monitoring the action plan for improving the performance of individual operators. The TRAI expects improvement to take place gradually with consistent effort by the service providers.

Analysing the quality of service by mobile companies for the quarter ending September, the TRAI found that 51 companies fully met the benchmark of 99 per cent call success rate, the call drop rate performance has been met by most companies and billing complaints per 100 bills issued have been found to be within norms for only 49 operators.

The TRAI found that a large number of companies failed to meet the target of less than one compliant per 1,000 bills. Companies that missed the mark included Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in 13 telecom circles/metros (including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Chennai and Kolkata), Bharti, Tata and Idea (five circles each), Hutch in four, Aircell (Chennai), BPL (Tamil Nadu) and Reliance in Assam. Network congestion measured in slow data rate channel was high in several BSNL circles, Bharti (six circles including Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka) and Hutch (Kolkata and Mumbai).

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business