Survey report on quality of services was also unveiled on the day. NTA officials said that the directive was issued as the operators didn´t respond to their earlier instruction to improve the quality of service. Operators had expressed commitment to improve the quality of service about a year ago.[break]
"If the operators continue to defy the instructions; the regulator had the authority to scrap the operating license," said Ananda Raj Khanal, director of the NTA.
Independent Consultant carried opinion survey and performance test in the period of July to September 2011 in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar and Nepalgunj.
The report shows that quality of service is comparatively better in the capital than in other cities. Under wireless service, the overall quality of service of Ncell and UTL CDMA was found 0.6 out of 1 (benchmark) meaning the service was satisfactory. Similarly, overall index showed GSM and CDMA service of Nepal Telecom (NT) at 0.2, meaning poor.
Parameters like call setup success, call drop, point of interconnection (POI) congestion, call quality index were considered for the finding of network performance of wireless service. Ncell has 91.8 percent of call setup success rate against NT´s GSM which is at 73.7 percent in Kathmandu.
Under the customer perception regarding quality of service of all three operators was found poor. Network performance, billing performance, enquiry service, supplementary service and maintainability of service index were the parameters used to find out quality of service.
Despite, NTA´s strict instructions there are few chances for the quality of service to improve.
Deputy Managing Director of NT Bhagat Man Singh Pradhan said they were not able to give quality of service as procurement process were always halted or delayed by authorities like Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).
UTL officials said load shedding was interrupting the service as telecommunication infrastructure like Base Transcriver Station (BTS) had battery back of up only eight hours.
Meanwhile, Ncell officials said that they don´t agree with the outcomes of the survey stating that in most of the cases the operator was above the benchmark level in the separate survey carried by the operator itself.
“We on quarterly basis are doing the survey among the entire network of seven million customers which is completely contradictory with NTA survey report,” Ncell CEO Pasi Koistinen said.
He further suggested to the regulator to differentiate between network performance and customer experience measure for network quality.
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