In mid 2012 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued a public consultation on standards for quality of service (QoS) related to mobile data services. LIRNEasia responded. Nearly two years since, the issues that prompted the public consultation persist.
Consumers are being wooed by telecom companies in advertisements regarding high speed wireless data services and product packs in which they are promised speeds of up to 7.2 megabit a second or 21 megabit a second.
TRAI said it has been monitoring the ‘minimum download speed’ reported by the TSPs for each data plan since last three quarters. It has been seen that the minimum download speed is not uniform across all licensed service areas (LSAs). The minimum download speed varies amongst the telecom services providers (TSPs) even for the same technology and the variation is also quite large eg:- in 2G technology, the speed varies from 21.42 kbps to 97.06 kbps between the operators, the regulator said.
One of LIRNEasia’s recommendations was to say that service providers should measure and publish typical download speeds in additional to the theoretical maximum that is commonly used in advertising.
A second public consultation is currently underway to set technology-based minimum download speeds for wireless services.
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