TRAI for new phone connection in 21 days

TRAI for new phone connection in 21 days
AGENCIES

New Delhi, July 5: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today asked basic telecom operators to provide new telephone connections to subscribers within 21 days of registration as part of its short-term `quality of services' (QoS) guidelines.

The target of providing connection within 21 days has to be achieved over a period of one year from now, TRAI chairman M S Verma said here while releasing the QoS parameters for basic and cellular service providers.

TRAI has announced parameters to be achieved over four years. Time period for providing new connection over next two years will come down to 15 days and less than seven days in next four years (by 2004). New guidelines would be applicable from today, Verma told reporters.

Asked whether penalties would be imposed in case of non-compliance to the regulations, verma said "there would be no penalty initially." Other QoS parameters are with regard to fault incidence, time period for fault repairing, dial tone delay, metering and billing credibility and customer care services.

With regard to cellular phone services, Verma said 98 per cent of faults should be cleared within 24 hours as a short-term (one year) target. It should gradually improve to 99 per cent over the next two years and 100 per cent in the next three years, he added.

Verma said the regulations stipulating QoS parameters was only a beginning and over a period of time these parameters would be refined and raised. Verma said that TRAI would submit final recommendations with regard to universal service obligation (USO) in next eight to ten weeks.

Earlier this week TRAI had issued a consultation paper on USO to examine in detail various funding concepts and requirement of funds to be raised through imposition of universal service levy (USL). The regulator was looking at increasing rural teledensity to 4 per cent by 2002 from 0.4 per cent at present, he said, adding that village public telephone (VPT) in every village and internet at district level should be made available in the given time-frame.

As per the information available each line in the rural area costs about Rs 30,000 while the revenue was a meagre Rs 1,000 annually, he said. "General thumb rule is that 30 to 35 per cent return on each line, at least Rs 10,000, would make the line financially viable," Verma added.