Question : SURVEY ON QUALITY OF SERVICES

(a) whether Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has conducted customer satisfaction/ quality of services survey through independent agency/ agencies for major telecom companies;

(b) if so, the details and outcome thereof, company and circle-wise including the details of the institutes which conducted the survey;

(c) the criteria adopted to find out the customer satisfaction level as far as call drops and broadband connectivity/ functioning; and

(d) the action taken by the Government on the findings of the survey?

THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)

(a) Yes, Madam.

(b) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been periodically undertaking Customer satisfaction surveys through independent agencies to assess the Customer perception of Quality of Service (QoS). The survey was carried out during the period from June, 2014 to November, 2014 in the service areas of Assam, Kolkata, Orissa, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat in respect of Basic Telephone Service (Wire line), Cellular Mobile Telephone Service and Broadband Service. The survey has been done by M/s VOICE for North Zone, M/s Mott Macdonald Pvt. Ltd for West Zone, M/s IMRB International for East Zone. Further M/s Spectrum Planning (India) Ltd has recently been awarded the contract for conducting the survey in South zone. The service area wise detailed report/outcome of the survey is available in public domain on TRAI’s website namely www.trai.gov.in for information of all the stakeholders, including service providers.

(c) The survey questionnaire has been framed to assess customer perception on services through various QoS parameters specified in the regulations which inter alia included parameters such as Network performance reliability and availability; Maintainability; Overall service quality ; Satisfaction with the facility to measure the broadband connection speed etc. The satisfaction of the customers were assessed on a scale of 1 to 7, where a score of 4 to 7 denotes levels of customer satisfaction and score below 4 is considered as customer dissatisfaction.

(d) The results of the survey reveals that the Telecom service providers need to take effective steps for making their consumers aware of the various grievances redressal mechanism available to them including awareness of the appellate authority to improve customer’s satisfaction. Accordingly TRAI has been pursuing with the Telecom Service Providers for improving quality of service and has been interacting with the service providers and consumer organizations through workshops at various places in the country for creating consumer awareness about grievance redressal mechanism and other measures taken by TRAI to protect the interest of consumers.