The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman RS Sharma will meet telecom companies in the first week of January to discuss important and strategic issues. During the meeting, the authority will also seek these telcos' views on priority areas for 2018, the Economic Times reported.
“We intend to call a meeting in the first week of January of all telcos and ask them of the priority areas. These are important and strategic issues. We will also share with them the status or closure of the areas that we identified last year… we have broadly closed most of them, and we will be closing them all by the end of this year,” Trai chairman RS Sharma was quoted as saying the publication.
The regulator, however, will also prepare its own set of priority areas which it will look into in the new year, Sharma said, adding that the final issues would be decided after due consultation with telecom operators.
In January this year, the regulator had a similar meeting with telecom service providers. Basis the discussion, the regulator had zeroed in on areas such as tariff principles, disaster recovery communications, review existing telephone numbering plan, Internet-based calling services, the structure of universal services obligation fund (USOF), crowdsourcing of data for measuring service quality and next-generation networks.
The regulator is also planning to start drive tests for measuring the quality of data services on a granular level, aimed at making voice and data connectivity better for mobile phone users. The Trai is currently mulling over the option of viewing speeds of all networks at one's location or travel route in the MySpeed App.
These test will be on the same lines that it conducts tests for measuring the quality of calls being made on telcos’ networks. “The data drive test will measure upload speed, download speed, latency, browsing speed and streaming speed,” the official said.
According to him, the Trai has already begun working on improving its MySpeed app, which has been emulated by regulators in Europe.
The application will soon have an option of viewing speeds of all competing networks at one's location or travel route, besides his or her own network’s speed.
