TRAI Mandates Compensation for Users Affected by Service Outages, Increases Penalties

Telecom operators must now compensate subscribers for service outages exceeding 24 hours at the district level, according to new regulations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The updated rules, announced on Friday, also increase the penalty for failing to meet quality benchmarks from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.

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Graded Penalty System Introduced

The revised regulations introduce a graded penalty system with fines of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh, and Rs 10 lakh for various levels of rule violations. These new standards replace three previous sets of regulations covering basic and cellular mobile services, broadband services, and broadband wireless services.

Under the new rules, telecom operators must offer rent rebates for postpaid customers and extend connection validity for prepaid users in case of a network outage in a district. If an outage lasts more than 24 hours, service providers must provide a proportional rent rebate based on the subscribed tariff for the actual number of days affected.

Compensation Details

The regulator specifies that any network outage lasting over 12 hours in a calendar day will be counted as one full day when calculating rent rebates or validity extensions. Compensation must be provided within one week of rectifying the significant network outage.

Fixed-line service providers are also required to compensate both postpaid and prepaid customers if faults in their network are not fixed within three days. However, outages caused by natural calamities are exempt from these compensation rules.

Broadband Activation and Coverage Maps

Broadband service providers must activate 98 per cent of connections within seven days of receiving payment from customers. Additionally, mobile service providers are required to display service-specific geospatial coverage maps for 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G on their websites to assist users.

These new regulations will come into effect six months from now.

The new norms aim to improve service quality and ensure better accountability from telecom operators. By enforcing these rules, Trai seeks to enhance customer satisfaction and reliability in telecom services across India.