The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday issued a consultation paper to review the quality-of-service standards for telecom operators and broadband service providers. The consultation comes after Trai received number of complaints from the subscribers regarding call drops and other network related issues especially after rollout of 5G services, it said.
With the increase in coverage of 4G and 5G networks in the country compared to the 2G and 3G networks, there is a requirement of stringent performance benchmarks to improve consumer experience, especially related to call drops.
“Even with widespread coverage of 4G networks in the country and rollout of 5G services, there are increasing number of complaints of call drops, call muting, low data throughput etc which raises question marks on the network design and provisioning of required network resources,” Trai said.
“The QoS (quality of services) parameters and benchmarks for voice and data services are technology agnostic in present regulations. The relevant terminology for 5G services has also been updated in draft regulations to monitor QoS performance of 5G,” Trai said, adding that for closer view of QoS, there is a need for monthly QoS performance reporting at the state and Union territory level in addition to at licensed service area (LSA) level.
In a 149-page consultation paper, Trai has sought comments on subjects such as reasons for increasing gaps between the QoS reported by the service providers and the QoS experienced by the consumers, transparent framework for measurement and reporting of QoS and quality of experience (QoE) especially in 4G and 5G, adverse impact on existing consumer voice and data services upon rollout of enterprise use cases of 5G, among key things.
According to Trai, 5G networks support three broad service categories – Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra Low Latency Communication (uLLC) and Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC). While present 5G networks, being rolled out by service providers in the country, supports eMBB which can deliver voice and wireless broadband services, the uLLC and mMTC use cases are still evolving. These kind of technologies and their impact on service quality will also be among key discussion areas of the consultation issued by Trai.
Currently, the performance assessment period is done for a quarter that too over a large area like LSA. Trai, however, noted that telcos are currently meeting the QoS benchmarks.
Trai has also sought comments on the measures required to accelerate the adoption of AI for management of QoE to reduce consumer complaints protectively and enable real-time reporting of QoS performance to consumers.
To simplify regulatory framework for QoS, Trai is proposing to have single regulation dealing with QoS standards for all voice and data services irrespective of their access medium that is for both wireline and wireless services. Accordingly, three regulations are proposed to be merged into a single regulation, Trai said.