Anil Anand
New Delhi, Sept 9: In a wake-up call to rectify the telecommunication services, particularly mobile telephony, in Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre will initiate a study to identify reasons behind poor services particularly in border and hilly areas of the State. The study would also entail suggesting measures to counter Pakistan influence, on account of the country’s telecom penetration, in border areas.
The move is a follow up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently expressing concern on complaints of frequent call drops. Accordingly, he had asked the TRAI to look into the matter to better the services. The J&K study is part of the drive launched by the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India to improve services across the country particularly in sensitive border States such as J&K and North-East.
The basic study to identify causes of poor telecommunication network and related services will begin in the state within two months. The core areas of coverage forming part of this study will be to tackle the complaints of frequent call drops and poor network and strengthen telecommunication network in areas bordering Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Accordingly, remedial measures will be taken based on the findings of this study.
TRAI chairman R S Sharma said that such a study has already been undertaken in Delhi and Mumbai metro cities in the first phase and will be followed in other areas including J&K. The exercise in two metro cities will be completed within one month.
A key component of the study in J&K to be started in the second phase will be a greater focus on border areas to counter the Pakistan influence. The two pronged strategy for these areas will be to cover Pakistan network and strengthen the domestic infrastructure. This will be done in areas where Pakistan telecommunication network also creates hindrances, through providing better services to the consumers.
The main purpose of the study will also be to identify weak spots and accordingly the telecom operators will be asked to set their infrastructure right. It will be done on the basis of interactions with various stakeholders. All the three regions of the State; Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are likely to be extensively covered under this exercise.
This study will be held in the backdrop of a customers’ satisfaction survey conducted by the TRAI through some independent agencies for the assessment of quality services. The survey was done during October 2014 to March 2015 and a final report was submitted recently.
It is learnt that the survey report pointed to serious public dissatisfaction towards telecommunication services provided both by official and private operators in the state. In North zone this study concentrated on Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and UP.
The survey was conducted on six quality service parameters – Provision of services, Billing performance, Help service including customer grievance redressal, Network performance reliability and availability, Supplementary and value added services and Overall service quality.
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