The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) wants to improve the quality of services (QoS) of telecom services in the country. The government body is planning to implement stringent rules to prevent call drops, which is an increasing issue faced by users. TRAI is also looking to enhance the network coverage inside buildings to fix low-signal issues.
TRAI’s new chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti says that the telecom sector is an evergrowing field that faces new challenges every day. Hence, the government and telcos should keep pace with time. New regulations should be brought into power, as per the current needs of the industry.
He further added that improving the QoS of telecommunication services in India is a prime goal for TRAI. Call drops have been a major nuisance, which authorities have been trying to fix for a long time. However, Lahoti did not share TRAI’s exact plan of action to tackle this issue.
TRAI has been quite strict with its regulations over the past few months. The regulator had also issued guidelines for telecom operators to reduce spam calls and messages. It said that telcos must acquire consent from users to send them promotional content.
Airtel and Vi had failed to comply with the new regulations in the given timeline. The TRAI immediately fined both telecom operators Rs 1 crore and ordered them to follow the new norms on priority. Furthermore, TRAI introduced a new Digital Content Acquisition (DCA) program where agencies are required to set up a portal where users can provide and withdraw their consent for promotional messages.
As of now, the TRAI has only warned telecom companies in India to fix the call drop problem. We can expect the government entity to bring some new regulations in this matter if telcos fail to counter the problem.
Currently, VoLTE is a major means for voice calls, where the voice is transmitted directly over 4G LTE networks. It is also known as HD-calling. Before the 4G rollout in India, voice calls were made over 2G networks which are slower, and sometimes result in muffled sound quality. VoLTE has improved the overall voice quality but is still prone to call drops.
With the increasing rollout of 5G services in the country by Jio and Airtel, VoNR or Vo5G is also soon catching up. It transmits calls directly over the new 5G network, which has better quality and improved reliability over VoLTE. However, the widespread rollout of VoNR could take longer as telcos and smartphone manufacturers have to update their infrastructure over time.
