The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recently released its draft Standards of Quality of Service for Mobile Data Services Regulations, 2012 in order to ensure high quality data service access for consumers.

These regulations are aimed at establishing benchmarks that will ensure customer satisfaction by making known the quality of service (QoS) that operators are required to provide and that consumers have the right to expect. The idea is to measure the QoS provided by operators against existing norms in order to assess performance and protect customer interests. TRAI has invited stakeholders to give their comments on the draft regulations.

Earlier, the regulator had notified the Quality of Service of Broadband Service Regulations, 2000 in October 2006, which set various QoS parameters for broadband services provided through wireline connections. Today, with 3G and broadband wireless access services being rolled out rapidly across the country, the mobile segment is set to witness significant uptake in data usage as compared to the wireline internet space. Given this scenario, there is an immediate need for defining QoS parameters for this segment.

The draft QoS parameters for data services are as follows:

Service activation/provisioning

This refers to the process of activation of data services and involves programming various network databases with information related to customers.

Successful data download attempts

These can be calculated as the ratio of successful data downloads to the total number of data download attempts in a specified time period. A data transmission is successful if a test file is downloaded completely and without any errors.

Successful data upload attempts

These can be measured as the ratio of successful data uploads to the total number of data upload attempts in a specified time period. A data upload is considered successful if a test file is uploaded completely and with no errors.

Minimum download speed

This is defined as the data transmission rate that is achieved while downloading a specific test file from a test server to the user’s device. This parameter is to be measured and reported to TRAI for all mobile data services and technologies.

Average throughput for packet data

This is defined as the average rate at which packets are transmitted in a network. Service providers need to constantly upgrade their network to meet the average throughput benchmark. Service providers can advertise the throughput being offered to their customers as per their category or plan. Percentage of Node B/BTSs carrying less than 80 per cent of the average throughput in a licensed service area

The throughput available to a customer will depend on the number of users served by a Node B/base transceiver station (BTS). If the number of users is more, the throughput may be less. In several cases, the throughput is affected by the limitations in the backhaul. The operators may have to augment this to maintain a certain level of throughput. It is necessary to measure the average throughput during the “time consistent busy hour” in order to assess operators’ QoS.

Latency

Latency is the amount of time taken by a packet to reach its destination after being transmitted. This time period is defined as the “end-to-end delay” occurring along the transmission path.

PDP context activation success rate

A packet data protocol (PDP) context specifies access to an external packet-switching network. Successful PDP context activation is defined as the ratio of successful PDP context activations to the total number of PDP context activation attempts in a specified time period.

Drop rate