TRAI directs telcos to improve call services for better 5G experience

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed telecom service providers to take urgent steps to demonstrate visible improvement in quality of service and quality of experience by consumers, including 5G.

In a meeting with telecom operators, the authority told telcos to analyse the issue of call muting and one way speech and take corrective action on priority.

"While rolling out the 5G network, TSPs should ensure that there is least disturbance or degradation of quality of service (QoS) of existing telecom services," said the TRAI.

TRAI held a meeting with major mobile service providers on Friday to review the issues related to quality of telecom services being faced by consumers and the menace of unsolicited commercial communications (UCCI), like pesky calls and text messages by telemarketers.

The authority further told the iiiTSPs to closely monitor the incidences of long-duration network outages.

"Such outages adversely affect quality of services and consumer experience. All the telecom providers were asked to report such outages to TRAI in any district or state," said the telecom regulator.

TRAI also asked TSPs to plan and implement systems for online data collection for quality of service (QoS) benchmarks and their processing to generate performance reports with License Service Area, State level or lower granularity.

"This will simplify the process of QoS performance reporting by TSPs and thereby reduce the compliance burden," it said.

Earlier this week, a survey revealed that two in three Indians get three or more pesky calls every day and 50 per cent of them said such calls originate from a personal number of people.

According to LocalCircles which conducted the survey, 45 per cent or people get on average 3-5 pesky calls each day while 16 per cent claimed getting 6-10 such calls per day.

Around 60 per cent received most calls related to "selling financial services", 18 per cent got most calls related to "selling real estate" while 10 per cent received most calls "offering a job/earnings opportunity."

In the meeting, the TRAI asked telecom regulators to curb the misuse of Headers and Message Templates of Principal Entities (PEs) by some telemarketers and also the messages from unauthorised or unregistered telemarketers, including telemarketers using telephone numbers.