Customer care has hardly been a top-of-mind issue for any business in India, telecom being no exception. However, with more competition and little to differentiate in core technology, service quality is emerging as the most effective competitive tool.

While service providers have slowly but surely recognized this, ensuring service quality remains a tough task, identification of priorities being the initial, but most crucial hurdle. VOICE&DATA thought that the best way to do that would be a brainstorming session involving the top executives in regulatory, industry and user organizations.

It invited members from the regulatory, service providers, and user fraternity to discuss and set out the agenda. Rajendra Singh, senior advisor to TRAI, started the proceedings, with a presentation on QoS from the TRAI perspective, followed by a user perspective presented by Anil Kumar of Telecom Watchdog.

The discussion that followed was moderated by Vishnu Goel, managing director, Acterna.

The panel discussed the fact that in spite of more operators being in the fray, the quality of service had not really measured up to the rising expectations of the customer.

The panel suggested that the state of things would improve once the new operators started testing out their services and giving SLAs and guarantees, or the incumbents took it upon themselves to fill the existing gaps, especially on the customer care front.

KH Khan CGM, Delhi, MTNL “Are we to define quality of service for the whole nation or just the urban and semi-urban areas?”a

KH Khan
On TRAI’s efforts: I don’t think the guidelines are enough. What is the point of saying that you will achieve a particular level of QoS, when it is practicably not possible. In a place where there is no competition, what is the point of a regulator finding out QoS of an incumbent? Is there any alternative for the customer?

Urban-rural QoS divide: I don’t think it is practical to define the same quality of service throughout the nation. The resources needed will be enormous and may not be worthwhile. Should we have the same kind of QoS for the general consumer or the business customer? I think there has to be a difference.

Sudipta Sen managing director, Comsat Max “The attitude of serving the client in the proper manner should set in at all the customer touchpoints.”

Sudipta Sen
On role of technology: While we do have an SLA to define parameters such as availability, the challenge is to keep the same level of quality as the network grows. That’s where we use technology a lot. If there is a hub down at any of my sites, I automatically get an SMS on my cellphone, generated by the system.

Investments in QoS: We have been investing in three key areas. One, what technology is to be implemented at what time. Two, the methods and processes. Three, the human capital—the attitude of serving the client should set in at all the customer touchpoints.

Amitabh Singhal secretary, ISPAI “We have to consistently reinvent ourselves, and have measurement criteria built into our network.”

Amitabh Singhal
On ISP-related QoS issues: Quality has to be a national issue. We as an industry today compete globally. It is not just the matter of survival for the industry, it is also for the businesses that depend upon connectivity. In December, TRAI came out with the guidelines for ISPs. There was a mismatch between what was expected out of us and what we can seek as customers of basic operators.

MODERATOR Vishnu Goel, managing director, Acterna “Whenever there is a quality of service issue, there is a search for a scapegoat.”

QoS relating to Internet telephony: This is an area where an entire range of telecom service providers has to do several things to make the customer get the expected QoS. TRAI says that it will constitute a high-level committee to look into issues of interoperability which is also an integral part when you try to establish some sort of QoS.

Deepak Maheshwari
On what is QoS: Quality of service is not just a desire or a dream. It is something for which the customer is paying.

Deepak Maheshwari head, technical chapter, ISPAI “Quality of service is not just a desire or a dream. It is something for which the customer is paying.”

Investments in QoS: When it comes to the Internet, there are a lot of investments going in. Here, the problem is of another nature. The whole gamut of services, the various technologies, the type of solutions that are available—everything changes so fast that here the CFOs, without going into viability and RoIs, ask how long will it be before the network will require an upgrade. Here, typically the upgrades like Diffserv, and MPLS cost very high.

Shankar Halder CTO, Escotel “You have to spend on the network. The risk is far more in having not spent correctly at the right time.”

Shankar Halder
On the role of the regulator: Specifying some quality standards, not really saying how it actually relates to the perception of the customer, is something which we have to revisit. Probably two years down the line, it will be absolutely uncontrollable. Who will monitor the quality of service? To my mind, it has to be left to the market.

Investments in QoS: It is clear that you have to invest on the network. However, it is not so easy to get funds even on the network front. But one must understand here that if you don’t make the strategic investments at the right point of time, you will lose out to the competition.

P Ganesh, Deputy Director General, Strategic Planning, BSNL “Standardization is crucial for new services and technologies to coexist with the old technologies.”

P Ganesh
On what is QoS: The issue of standardization is very crucial. This is to enable all the new services and new technologies to coexist with the old technologies. The other issues are that of reliability—reliability of 99.999—and interoperability

Investments in QoS: One obstacle for us is the legacy network. New technologies promise better QoS and better customer service. Investments are being made on these and they are being integrated into the legacy network while the legacy network is slowly being phased out.

Rajiv Kataria COO, Tata Teleservices “Quality of service is definitely a customer issue and network and all other things are a means to provide that.”

Rajiv Kataria
On QoS being a customer issue: The customer is not really bothered about the technical jargons such as bit error rate, downtime rate and all these things. What he wants to know is if he places an order how fast will he get his service. If there is a problem, how quickly it will be resolved. And what is the average time and the maximum time. If I am a subscriber of multiple services, how will I be billed. QoS is definitely a customer issue.

Investments in QoS: Network investments are easily justifiable.

Alok Kumar Chief, Operations, Bharti Touchtel “You go to your CFO saying one satisfied customer will get you eight more. That does not work.”

Alok Kumar
On having a UCO fund: Up till now, we have had USO fund. Now, can we have something called universal customer obligation (UCO) fund created which drives the regulator then ensures the measurement system is transparent and nobody doubts it? The fund can be used to reward the top achievers of QoS parameters in each service segments.

Investments in QoS: Though everybody feels this investment is a good one, where one fails is in having a measurement system of how the investments on QoS pays back.

Nareshchandra Laishram