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MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority
of India (Trai) has issued guidelines to
all Internet and broadband service providers
(ISPs, UASLs, CMSPs, BSOs) in a bid to protect
consumer interests and enhance subscriber
satisfaction.
Under
the guidelines, the internet and broadband
service providers are required to ensure
availability of minimum bandwidth in their
network according to maximum contention
ratio (number of users competing for the
same bandwidth) suggested by Trai for different
services based on number of subscribers.
According
to Trai, service providers will have to
endow the consumers with information regarding
contention ratios, adopted by them to provide
Internet/broadband service in their tariff
plans submitted to the Authority, manual
of practice, call centers and on their websites.
Trai,
however, prefers least regulatory intervention
while providing greater flexibility to service
providers (ISPs, UASLs, CMSPs, BSOs) to
ensure better quality of service to internet/broadband
subscribers. It realises that any regulatory
burden in the current economic health of
the Internet sector may increase the cost
of service provisioning and will adversely
impact the growth of broadband.
In order to have a transparent subscriber
communication, education and awareness,
Trai has asked service providers to provide
adequate information to subscribers regarding
Internet/broadband services, offered and
marketed by them.
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