Telecom companies will have to pay a maximum penalty of up to Rs. 10 lakh
if they provide false reports on quality of broadband services, as per a
draft proposal of regulator TRAI released on Friday.
"If the performance
monitoring report furnished by a service provider under regulation 4 is
false it shall be liable to pay an amount, by way of financial
disincentive, not exceeding Rs. 10 lakh per parameter for which such
false report has been furnished," TRAI said in its proposed amendment to
Quality of Service of Broadband Service Regulations.
The
parameters include activation time of broadband connection, fault repair
or service restoration time, billing issues, response time to the
customer for assistance and connection speed among others.
TRAI
has proposed that if a service provider offering broadband service fails
to meet the benchmark of QoS, then it will be liable to pay penalty up
to Rs. 50,000 per parameter.
Further, in case of second or
subsequent such contravention, TRAI has proposed that penalty up to Rs. 1
lakh per parameter should be levied on service provider for each
contravention.
TRAI's draft amendment is open for public comments till November 9, 2012.