Telcos to be fined up to Rs 10 lakh for poor service, Trai

Telecom operators will now be penalised for providing poor quality of service and could attract fines of up to Rs 10 lakh for incorrect information on every performance parameter. 

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

Trai measures performance of mobile phone operators on basis of over 10 parameters. The regulator said as per new rule, service providers will have to pay penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh for each parameter furnished incorrectly in the report submitted to the regulator. 

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

For landline service providers, 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 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 postpaid subscribers. 

Trai rules say that there should be "not more than 1 complaint per 1000 customers for metering, charging, credit, and validity from pre-paid customers. The billing dispute should be resolved within a month by operators as per rule. 

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