Mobile services in Assam below standard: TRAI

Telecom performance indicators down, many bills disputed

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, February 1: A report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has said most of the mobile services in Assam are not keeping up to the guidelines and benchmarks set by the regulatory body.

According to TRAI’s Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators for June–September 2014 released recently, Aircel has been the worst performer in the network parameters – network availability, connection establishment and connection maintence.

Even BSNL has not been able to meet the prescribed standards with respect to network availability and call drops. BSNL’s accessibility of call centre is also very poor. According to TRAI guidelines, it should be more than 95 per cent, but in case of BSNL, it is only 79 per cent in Assam.

Customers of Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and BSNL in some circles have reported maximum discrepancies in their phone bills, according to the TRAI report.

As per TRAI guideline, not more than 0.1 per cent of the total bills raised by a company in a service area should be disputed. However, 0.33 per cent post–paid customers of Vodafone customers in Assam and 0.24 in the Northeast circle have disputed their bills.

As per TRAI guidelines, if a customer raises any dispute regarding his bill, companies must resolve the issue within four to six weeks to 100 per cent satisfaction of the customer.

BSNL was uble to resolve billing dispute within 4 weeks in 10 out of 22 telecom circles in the country which include Bihar, Kolkata, North East, Odisha, UP West and West Bengal.

RTL could not meet the standards when it came to percentage of calls answered by the service provider within 90 seconds.

Only in 50 per cent of the cases, BSNL could refund deposits in the prescribed 60 day time limit after termition/ closure of a connection.

Meanwhile, the number of mobile subscribers in Assam rose from 15.75 million in June, 2014 to 16.09 million in September, 2014, an increase of 2.15 per cent in a quarter.

However, in Assam only 14.2 out of every 100 people have internet connection. There are 3.53 million rrowband customers and 1.01 million broadband customers.

The number of BSNL PCOs in the State came down from 10,846 to 10,837 during the period. In the Northeast circle, 1,036 PCOs were shut down during the period.