Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on Tuesday, has directed all the telecom service providers (TSPs) to report on the incidences of major network outages affecting the telecom services to the entire consumers of a district (revenue district as defined by the Union/ State government) continuously for a period of more than four hours, within 24 hours of their occurrence.
The Authority noted that there have been major network outages in the country of prolonged duration, especially in border and hilly areas, which adversely affect the quality of services being provided or even with no services to the consumers in those areas.
“To understand the root cause of major network outages and get relevant support from local authorities extended to the service providers, if needed, the Authority has decided to collect the information about any such outage at district level,” TRAI said.
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It said the TSPs should inform about the root cause of such major network outage and corrective actions taken thereof, within 72 hours of restoration of services, in the format specified in the direction by the Authority.
“The Direction shall come into force with immediate effect,” it added.
The development comes after the TRAI met representatives from telcos to discuss about quality of services (QoS) on Monday.
TRAI asked the TSPs to take immediate action to curb pesky calls and messages by getting banks and financial institutions (FIs) to clean up unused templates, as the regulator initiated a slew of steps to crack down on the issue of unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) that, at times, leads to instances of frauds and scams.
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And, if they fail to do so, the regulator will be constrained to block their messages in DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) in consumer interest.
All principal entities (PEs) will be required to block unused headers and templates within 30 days and 60 days, respectively, it said.
It also added that complaints received at Cyber Crime Cell of the Ministry of Home Affairs will be shared with all TSPs for necessary action.
