TELECOM regulator TRAI’s new quality of service norms with stricter provisions have comewithoutmuchchangein challenges that telecom operators face on ground in terms ofroll-out, illegal transmitters etc, industry body COAI said on Sunday. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued new quality of service rule son Friday, making it mandatory for telecom operators to compensate subscribers in case of service outages for more than 24 hours at a district level. TRAI has also increased the penal amount to Rs 1lakh from Rs 50,000 for failing to meet each quality benchmar kunder the new rules.

 

The regulator has introduced agraded penalty system of Rs1 lakh, Rs2lakh, Rs 5 lakhandRs 10 lakh for different scales of rule violations and submitting false report under revised regulations -- “The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wirelines and Wireless) and Broadband (Wire line and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024”. Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea,BSNL etc., said that the new rules will increase compliance cost for service providers without any commen suratebenefits for the customers.“TSPs still grapple with Right of Way (RoW) issues when acquiring permissions for infrastructure deployment in public and private l and for the installation of cell towers and fiberoptic cables,” COAI Director General S P Kochhar said.