Quality of service cannot be met strictly: Industry

New Delhi, Mar 14: The country's cellular industry today (Mar 14, 2006) said the recquired Quality of Service (QOS) benchmarks for mobile phone services cannot be met as laid down by the Telecom regulator, TRAI.

In a letter to TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal, who steps down from office next week, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said the action to be taken against those operators whose networks have congestion levels above the benchmark of 0.5 per cent have been selective.

''We believe that such selective actions by the Authority reflect an underlying recognition of the ground reality that in this era of rapid growth, it is not possible for the industry to strictly meet the QOS benchmarks fixed by the Authority, ''the letter written by Director General COAI, T V Ramachandran said.

He said during the period September-November 2005, the congestion level has actually gone down at a number of PoIs.

The letter said that all Points of Presence (POIs) are for two-way exchange of traffic i.e. there is no separate circuit for incoming and outgoing calls. Therefore, if congestion is noted in one direction of the POI circuit, the same degree of congestion is bound to be in the other direction also. Under these circumstances we believe that it is incorrect of the Authority to target the operators at one end only.

''We are informed that you have given a period of ten days to the Operators for showing cause as to why penal action be not initiated against them under Section 29, 30 read with Section 34 of the Act.

In this regard, it is submitted that penalty provisions are to be invoked in cases of willful defaults and not where the default is for reasons beyond one's control,'' the letter noted.

A penalty can be imposed where one finds an intentional and willful default. In the present case, the Authority would appreciate that there is no element of willful default on part of the operators. In fact the operators are more adversely impacted, both by losing revenues due to non completion of calls as also in respect of the customer satisfaction issue.

Therefore, to invoke penal provisions may also be excessive and totally disproportionate to the alleged default.

UNI