Demand-side surveys add tremendous value in many areas of research; Assessing Quality of Service (QoS) for mobile, fixed and broadband services isn’t one of them. Certainly not when it involves a perception survey. The Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) attempts to understand the user satisfaction of availability and QoS for mobile cellular, fixed and broadband services. QoS is an objective measure whereas customer satisfaction surveys are subjective. Therefore, more technical QoS measures such as network availability, performance (not further defined by TRAI) and reliability cannot simply be assessed the same way in which complaint redressal, for instance, would be. In LIRNEasia’s multiple interactions with the Government of Philippines and with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU through the Expert Group on Telecom / ICT Indicators) we iterated the fact that although there are many different ways in which QoS (namely broadband QoS) can be assessed, perception surveys are far less than ideal. The Times of India emphasises this in its report that speaks of the disconnect between the TRAI survey results and the actual situation on the ground.
LIRNEasia’s methodology on Broadband QoS diagnostics and test results including that of India can be found here.
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