Amid rising situations of service quality points and shopper complaints, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has requested telecom operators to report call drop and outage data at the State-level additionally and take instant steps to “demonstrate visible improvement” in quality of service and connectivity expertise for customers throughout the nation.
On the problem of pesky promotional calls and messages, TRAI mentioned telcos will likely be requested to implement an AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) instrument which has been discovered to be efficient in detecting and blocking spam that’s pushed by unregistered telemarketers by way of phone numbers (10 digits numbers).
“This new comprehensive tool (currently being tested by Vodafone Idea) is expected to be implemented in about two months by the industry, reducing the menace of unsolicited promotional messages,” TRAI Chairman P. D. Vaghela mentioned.
TRAI officers met telecom firms together with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea on February 17 to overview service quality points, norms for 5G companies in addition to on unsolicited business communications.
The regulator made it clear to gamers that extra stringent service benchmarks are on the anvil when it comes to calling quality parameters, and {that a} session course of will likely be initiated by TRAI within the coming months for this.
TRAI’s diktat to telecom firms to enhance service quality is sure to cheer cellular prospects, irked by call drops and patchy networks. While 5G call data will likely be reported underneath the present system for now, separate QoS (Quality of Service) indicators for these next-generation companies will come up ultimately.
“We have been examining the issue of call drops and service quality, and there has been a rise in complaints also after 5G implementation. We have told operators to improve the quality of service immediately, whether or not it is due to the rollout of 5G services,” Mr. Vaghela advised reporters after the assembly.
He added: “Time has come to relook at the parameters completely.” While an overhaul of call quality benchmarks is on the anvil, firms even now could have to report call drop and outage data at a State-level, and maybe at a later stage at the district level as nicely.
This signifies that the data reported will likely be extra granular and detailed (for 29 States) as in opposition to the present follow of data reported at the level of Licenced Service Areas (22 LSAs in all) and averaged on a quarterly foundation.
The State-level reporting will make sure that the issue areas and patchy networks in sure States, particularly North East, could be clearly recognized, and corrective motion could be taken by gamers. While such detailed reporting (at state level) will begin instantly, making it a part of QoS norms, and imposing monetary disincentives will take a while, Mr. Vaghela mentioned.
“We have decided today that we will also monitor State-level quality of service,” Mr. Vaghela identified. The parameters will likely be made extra tighter going ahead, he mentioned including a session paper will likely be taken out on this regard.
“The authority has directed telecom service providers (TSPs) to take urgent steps to demonstrate visible improvement in quality of service and quality of experience by consumers. TSPs were asked to analyse the issue of call muting and one-way speech and take corrective action on priority,” TRAI mentioned in an announcement.
While rolling out 5G community, operators will want to guarantee that there’s least disturbance or degradation of service quality of current telecom companies. During the assembly, telecom operators admitted that there have been some “problems” throughout the rollout of 5G, however assured that these have now been sorted out.
“TSPs were further informed that TRAI is closely monitoring the incidences of long duration network outages. Such outages adversely affect quality of services and consumer experience,” TRAI mentioned in an announcement.
“All the telecom providers were asked to report such outages to the regulator in any district or State. TRAI may consider bringing suitable regulation in this regard, if required,” the assertion added.
TRAI additionally requested gamers to plan and implement programs for on-line data assortment for QoS benchmarks and their processing to generate efficiency experiences with License Service Area, State-level or decrease granularity.
“Considering the scale and the size of the network being set up for rollout of 5G services, and important use cases being developed by different industry verticals, TRAI asked TSPs to implement systems for internal QoS monitoring…on 24×7 and 360-degree basis,” it mentioned.
“The exploitation of network features as per standard and adoption of AI/ML techniques for service quality monitoring and management was also suggested,” TRAI assertion mentioned.
During the assembly, the regulator additionally took inventory of points round unsolicited business communications (UCC), and emphasised the necessity to curb situations of telemarketers misusing telephone numbers to ship out promotional messages.
“We are also going to write to all the key Ministries and Departments, RBI and other regulators…because they have a significant influence on banks, financial institutions and other stakeholders. We are going to ask them to take action with regard to cleaning of message templates and removing unnecessary headers,” Mr. Vaghela mentioned.
States and Departments are being sensitised as additionally they have interaction telemarketers for sending out vital info, say on advantages of varied schemes.
The telecom regulator on Thursday had issued instructions to telecom operators to act swiftly to cease the misuse of headers and message templates, because it got here down closely on unauthorised, pesky promotional messages by tele-marketers.
To cease such misuse and curb undesirable messages, the regulator has directed entry service suppliers (telecom operators) to reverify all registered headers and message templates on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform and block all unverified headers and message templates inside 30 and 60 days, respectively.
“We are working on creating a system based on AI/ML. Vodafone Idea has already implemented a sandbox experiment and it is successful, so we will use that. AI/ML allows identification of telemarketers or spammers using 10 digit numbers and those can be blocked…in next two months we should be able to implement that all over the country,” Mr. Vaghela mentioned.
One of the telecom operators, attending the TRAI’s QoS overview assembly, complained that service quality can be being affected by some low-quality handsets out there. TRAI has suggested gamers to write to the Telecom Department, to flag the problem of low-quality handsets.
