TRAI directs telcos to report major network outages within 24 hours

All large network outages that impair telecom services consistently for more than four hours in a district must be reported within 24 hours of the incident under this rule, which took effect right away.

In an effort to boost service quality, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has instructed telecoms to report outages in districts and the measures taken to address them within a day of the matter.

The industry regulator's instruction, which was made public on Tuesday, was the result of its observation that the telcos had neglected to report several occurrences of significant network outages in border and mountainous areas that occurred for technical reasons or as a result of natural disasters.

“The authority has observed that incidences of major network outage of telecom networks occurring due to technical reasons or due to natural calamities are not reported by the telecom service providers to TRAI. There have been major network outages in the country of prolonged duration, especially in border and hilly areas, which adversely affect the availability and quality of services being provided,” the telecom regulatory body said in a statement.

All large network outages that impair telecom services consistently for more than four hours in a district must be reported within 24 hours of the incident under this rule, which took effect right away.

Within 72 hours of the service being restored, telcos must also inform the regulator of the main reason behind the outage along with measures and steps taken to prevent a recurrence.

As per the outage monitoring website downdetector, Jio services were briefly unavailable earlier this month for a number of subscribers around Delhi-NCR. Users of telecoms like Jio and Airtel reported numerous instances of network failures last year as well.

Department of Telecommunications had also earlier released a statement in connection with the same stating, "Numerous complaints are received regarding quality of service of Telecommunications Network, call drops, echo, cross connections, incomplete or poor caller experience.  DoT in coordination with Telecom Service Providers has been endeavoring to identify the problem areas of dark spots or the areas without sufficient Telecom Tower coverage which result in Network issues and call drops."

The quality of services (QoS) in the telecom industry is now being monitored by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), at the request of the Indian government.

Consumers now face a serious challenge as a result of issues like call dropouts. The Department of Telecommunications(DoT) even scheduled a conference with the Indian telcos as a result of the declining QoS in December last year. Concerns over call dropouts and call failures have intensified as cell operators transition to 5G. Internal discussions have been taking place in the telecom sector.