The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has sought public opinion on relaxing service quality norms for fixed line and mobile phone services on parameters such as fault repair, false billing, response from customer care and related subscriber grievances.

Earlier, telecom service providers (TSPs) had approached the regulatory body seeking relaxation in quality of service (QoS) norms citing various issues in meeting these norms. However, TRAI has stated that prior to taking a final view on the representations of the TSPs, the authority wants to seek views of all stakeholders on various constraints/difficulties pointed out by TSPs in achieving the QoS benchmarks.

As per the existing norms, operators are required to address 90 per cent of the total complaints received from urban areas by the next day and 100 per cent within three days. Meanwhile, for rural and hilly areas, players have to address 90 per cent of the complaints by the next day and 100 per cent within a period of days.

While approaching TRAI, operators have sought more time for resolving complaints received from urban as well as rural and hilly areas. For complaints received from urban areas, operators have asked the authority to allow them to resolve 70 per cent of the complaints by next working day, 90 per cent in three days and 100 per cent within the next five days of receiving the complaints. Meanwhile, for rural and hilly areas, TSPs want 70 per cent of the total complaints to be addressed by the next day, 80 per cent in three days, 90 per cent of the complaints in five days and 100 per cent within seven days.

Further, the existing QoS benchmark requires operators to resolve all complaints within four weeks. TSPs have requested that this should be changed to 98 per cent of the complaints to be resolved within four weeks and 100 per cent within eight weeks. TSPs have pointed out to TRAI that the complaints registered after 5 pm in the evening can be marked for resolution only by 10 am next morning and this further compounds the delay in addressing the faults by the next working day.

In addition, operators have requested TRAI to provide them relaxation in complying with the QoS norms on time taken by customer care centre to respond to calls, closure of service, fault incidents, mean time to repair and period of applying credit, waiver or adjustment to the customer's account.

The regulator has set June 12, 2014 as the deadline for public comments and June 19, 2014 for counter comments.