TRAI to penalize cos for poor services

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has warned that it would impose fines if the service providers do not give quality service to customers.

The regulator has issued an amendment in regulation in which it has made provision to impose financial disincentives on service providers for not meeting quality of service benchmarks.

As per the new rules, service providers will have to pay a penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh for each parameter furnished incorrectly in the report submitted to the regulator. The TRAI has fixed ten parameters for imposition of fines.

"...Rs 50,000 per parameter for the first non-compliance and Rs 1,00,000 per parameter for subsequent non-compliance of the benchmarks," TRAI said in a statement.

For landline services, Trai said "for non- compliance with the benchmark for the Customer Service Quality Parameters at a rate not exceeding Rs 50,000 per parameter," will be levied.According to the benchmark set by TRAI, in the case of bills issued by Telecom operators "not more than 0.1 per cent of bills issued should be disputed over a billing cycle" of post -paid subscribers.

Similarly, there should not be more than 2 per cent call drops in the network of mobile phone operators and, in case of the worst affected service areas, it cannot be more than 3 per cent call drop in the network.