Under the new regulation, Trai has recommended a new calculation methodology for dropped call rate, which gives data on call drops for a specific operator across different circles
Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has asked telecom regulator Trai to extend the deadline for implementation of new regulations for quality of services, including call drops by six months to April next year.
“The industry is committed to partner with the authority to ensure the highest quality of services (QoS) standards for the customers. However, the implementation will require major changes in existing processes and alignment with concerned stakeholders. The revised regulation will bring a lot of changes in the measurement processes,” COAI director general Rajan Mathews said in a letter to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
Under the new regulation, Trai has recommended a new calculation methodology for dropped call rate (DCR), which gives data on call drops for a specific operator across different circles.
COAI said the regulation should be made effective from April 1, 2018, instead of the current deadline of October 1, 2017.
“The implementation of the revised measurement methodology will require building of the system and the software development, which will require significant time,” the letter said.
By shifting the QoS measurement and its compliance from the average basis to a percentile basis, Trai has made the compliance requirements much more stringent than the existing requirements.
And keeping in mind the presence of a large number of factors contributing to DCR being beyond the control of telecom service providers, the revised regulation has the potential of rendering the entire industry non-compliant.
Earlier, QoS reporting was managed by collating the data in the excel sheets which were exchanged over the e-mails. However, the new requirement is complex in nature and the same cannot be carried out in excel files.
The process for calculation of DCR would also require some manual steps such as inserting DCR codes for the cells such as unavailable cells. This would involve coordination among various stakeholders and will significantly impact the present performance measurement.
Last month, Trai issued stringent guidelines to curb call drops along with a maximum penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh on service providers if they fail to meet the benchmark for three consecutive quarters.
Under the previous Quality of Service rules, penalty on call drops was Rs 50,000 per violation. Now, the operators will have to pay up to Rs 5 lakh for the same period now.
DCR will be determined on percentile basis instead of averaging the performance of all telecom service providers for an entire service area during a month. "It will remove the anomaly which was getting introduced due to averaging of DCR of bad performing cells in the network with good or excellent performing cells," Trai said in a statement.
The new assessment methodology for dropped call rate will look into area-to-area variations in DCR as well as day-to-day variations. There have been some issues in the measurement of call drops as averages hide a lot of things, Trai had said.
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