The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday asked telcos to start reporting quality of services (QoS) data, including network outages and call drops, for states and Union Territories starting from the March quarter.

The directive comes a week after the regulator held a meeting with telcos on improving quality of services. Going by the parameters to check quality of services, Trai follows an averaging pattern from a licensed service area (LSA) point of view, which may not present a clear picture of outages and issues in small states and other areas.

“The authority has observed that submission of state and Union Territory-wise report for QoS parameters is essential for optimum analysis of QoS being provided by TSPs. This will also help respective state/UT governments in facilitating service providers in improving QoS in the State/UT as and when required,” Trai said.

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Telcos will have to submit the wireline service quality data within 45 days of the end of each quarter, and mobile services data within 21 days, according to Trai directions. “LSA-wise data, as currently being submitted through various performance monitoring reports, shall continue to be submitted,” the regulator said.

In a closed-door meeting with telecom operators on February 17, Trai asked them to take urgent steps to improve quality of services and experience of consumers.

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The discussions happened on tackling call drops, muted calls, and improving the quality of services.

“In the first phase, we have decided that we will start looking at the quality of service at the state level and after assessing that, we will then go to district levels,” Trai chairman PD Vaghela had told FE.

Considering the scale and size of network being set up for rollout of 5G services and growing usecases, Trai had also asked telcos to install internal service quality monitoring systems on a regular basis using artificial intelligence and machine learning.