Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Communications & Information Technology

05-December-2012 15:45 IST

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released “The Standards of Quality of Service for Wireless Data Services Regulations, 2012”.

Through the above regulations TRAI had mandated every Cellular Mobile Telephone Service provider or Unified Access Services provider to set up 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. The service providers are required to meet the Quality of Service benchmarks for the wireless data services in respect of parameter such as:

(a) Provision or activation of Data Services,

(b) Successful data transmission download/upload attempts from a test server,

(c) Minimum download speed from a test server covering all tariff plans, (d) Average Throughput for Packet data from a test server for all tariff plans,

(e) Latency for data services from a test server,

(f) PDP Context Activation Success Rate,

(g) Data Drop rate.

It has also been mandated that service providers have to publish on their websites, the details of all data services offered, along with their tariff, clearly indicating the cities and towns where such data services and tariff plans are applicable. The service providers shall not offer new data services or modify the existing data services or tariff (s) without prior publication at its website.

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MV/RK

Quality of Service obligations require wireless providers to deploy tests, meet data-performance benchmarks and publish service tariffs online. The Regulations require wireless data service providers to deploy servers and test probes covering each licensed area and to meet prescribed benchmarks for provision/activation, successful upload/downloads, minimum download speed, average packet-data throughput, latency, PDP context activation success rate, and data drop rate. Providers must publish all data services and tariffs on their websites, indicating applicable cities and towns, and must not introduce or modify services or tariffs without prior website publication.