TRAI Proposes Use Of AI To Monitor Quality Of Access, Broadband Services

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has proposed the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor the quality of wireless and wireline services.

The telecom regulator made the proposal in a recent consultation paper on ‘Review of Quality-of-Service Standards for Access Services (Wireless and Wireline) and Broadband
(Wireless and Wireline) Services’.

“Near real-time, rather than monthly QoS performance monitoring may be achieved by collection, processing, and correlation of performance data. AI can play an important role in effectively managing end-to-end QoS in a network,” TRAI said.

The regulator also said that the segmented approach for QoS management is the biggest bottleneck in unpredictable user experience, resulting in a wide gap between the QoS measured by the service provider and actual QoS perceived by the consumer.

“User experience is the aggregate outcome of QoS performance of each network segment i.e., access, backhaul, core and transport networks. Degradation of QoS performance of any network segment will affect the QoE of these services,” the paper added.

The TRAI Act, 1997 mandates the regulator to ensure the quality of service to protect the interest of the consumers of telecommunication services. However, the regulatory body has been receiving a number of complaints from the subscribers regarding call drops and other network related issues, especially after the rollout of 5G services.

Following detailed analysis of quarterly QoS performance reports, TRAI noted that due to the long performance assessment period of a quarter over a large area, there may be pockets or areas experiencing poor quality of service due to averaging effect.

To have a closer view of the status of QoS in states and UTs, the draft has proposed monthly QoS performance reporting at state and UT level.

“As 4G and 5G networks are providing much wider coverage in the country compared to the 2G and 3G networks, the stringent performance benchmarks, especially related to call drops, are
proposed for 4G and 5G services to improve consumer experience,” TRAI said.

The total number of broadband (including both wireless and wireline) users in India stood at 856.81 Mn at the end of May, 5.87 Mn higher than the 850.94 Mn recorded at the end of April. Jio added 3.04 Mn wireless subscribers in May, while Bharti Airtel added nearly 1.4 Mn subscribers.

The latest development comes at a time when a number of companies and startups are leveraging the AI boom. The technology is finding use cases across segments such as healthcare, content creation, among others. Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also proposed conversational payments on UPI using AI.

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