In this case, the penalty is paid to the regulator, while for call drops, where the recommendations may come on Friday, there may be some compensation to be made to the consumer.
Ahead of its recommendations on financial compensation to consumers for calls drops, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has almost doubled the penalty it levies on telecom operators for failing to meet quality of service (QoS) benchmarks set by it. QoS benchmarks include the performance of the operators on parameters like call drop, voice clarity, call connection, help services, metering and billing.
It is to be noted that these penalty are very different from what it may announce for call drops. In this case, the penalty is paid to the regulator, while for call drops, where the recommendations may come on Friday, there may be some compensation to be made to the consumer.
In the current case, where the regulator earlier levied a penalty of R50,000 on operators for failing to meet any network-related or consumer-related benchmarks, it has now been increased to R1 lakh.imilarly, if earlier failure to meet the benchmarks in every subsequent instance incurred a fine of R1 lakh each, it has now been made in the range of R1.50 lakh to R2 lakh each.
If an operator is still found wanting, the regulator could issue it a notice seeking an explanation for its failure to meet the standards.
Explaining the hike in the penalty, Trai said that through the monthly and quarterly monitoring it does of operators on QoS parameters, it was found that existing financial disincentives has not acted as a sufficient deterrent against non-compliance and there have been repeated consecutive cases of non-compliance of the benchmarks.
The regulator had floated a consultation paper on increasing the penalty in January this year and later completed the consultative process culminating in the announcement of the regulations on Thursday. Since quality of service comes under Trai’s domain, unlike policy issues, it does not send its recommendations to the government for final action. It has powers to directly issue regulations.
Industry sources told FE that hitherto there have not been any hefty penalty levied by Trai on any of the big operators for failing to meet QoS benchmarks. Though the consultative process of increasing the penalty was initiated and completed during the tenure of former Trai chairman Rahul Khullar, by when the issue of call drops and some form of financial compensation to consumers had not become as hot as it is today, the move still reflects the growing emphasis of the regulator on quality of service issues.
