TRAI publishes Minimum Quality Guidelines for Wireless Data Services
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has laid down stringent quality guidelines for Wireless Data Services that Telecom Operators will have to abide by.
This is going to come as much relief to Mobile and Internet users in India who have been frustrated with low quality of wireless data services provided by Operators. TRAI, yesterday released “The Standards of Quality of Service for Wireless Data Services Regulations, 2012” in which they came up with 8 new regulations, to streamline and improve quality of services provided by Operators.
The biggest and most important aspect which the TRAI regulations talk about is the data transmission speeds. Operators will now have to make sure that they offer minimum 75% of promised download speeds.
So if you have subscribed for a 7.2 mbps data connection, they will have to make sure that the minimum speed users gets should not be less than 5.4 mbps at an average over a month. This remains true for upload data transmission as well. Latency of data should not be more than 250ms as well.
Operators need to also make sure that data service availability does not fall down below 95 percent.
Wireless Data Services Regulations laid by TRAI
| S No. | Name of Parameter | Benchmarks | Averaged over a period |
| 3.1 | Service Activation /Provisioning | Within 4 hrs with 95% success rate. | One Month |
| 3.2 | Successful data transmission download attempts | >80% | One Month |
| 3.3 | Successful data transmission upload attempts | >75% | One Month |
| 3.4 | Minimum download speed | To be measured for each plan by the service provider and reported to TRAI | One Month |
| 3.5 | Average Throughput for Packet data | >75% of the subscribed speed. | One Month |
| 3.6 | Latency | Data <250ms | One Month |
| 3.7 | PDP Context Activation Success Rate | ?95% | One Month |
| 3.8 | Drop rate | ?5% | One Month |
How should Operators ensure quality of Wireless Data Service?
To make sure that operators abide by above regulations, every Telecom Operator or Unified Access Services provider has to have a test set up comprising of servers and test probes to cover the entire geographical
area of coverage of different data services in the licensed service area. This will ensure that quality of service benchmarks are met in every geographical location where the service provider operates.
The operators also now have to make sure that they publish all the data services offered along with their tariff, clearly indicating the geographical locations where they are offering their services.
TRAI, in last 18 to 24 months, have been regularly coming up with regulations to make sure that consumer interests are taken care of.
The above regulations will come into effect from January, 1st 2013. It sure looks like this new year is going to make mobile netizens happy!
THIS IS ARVIND FROM CHENNAI, AND MY NUMBER IS 9080645419. AN IMPORTANT FEEDBACK, WHICH
ALSO REDUCES DUPLICATES, AND INCREASES COMPETITION, SOLUTION FOR PERMANENT NUMBER.
we should bring only one number for one id proof, but can have many operators sim.
LIKE WE HAVE MANY IDENTITY CARDS FOR ONE PERSON , ONE PROOF
i.e., my number is 9080645419 with id proof of me, but it is with idea, but the same number 9080645419 cant be bought with airtel, vodafone, etc as per the rules of now.
but if he needs connection with these operators also.
he should be allowed, so that a single mobile number for every single id proof.
most are using dual sim, with different numbers,
but having only one number as his permanent number, the other has temporary for sometime, and then it is actually gets disconnected.
this can be avoided if above is allowed,
and also can bring competition in tariff more.