The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which had earlier issued show-cause notices to private operators over network congestion issues, has hauled up state-owned BSNL and told the carrier that it was the primary cause for the increase in network congestion levels across the country.
The networks of private operators and BSNL are connected via points of interconnect (PoIs), through which the traffic flows.
The higher the traffic, the greater the need for PoIs to ensure that networks are congestion-free.
TRAI has stipulated that the benchmark for PoI congestion should be less than 0.5%. In a communication to BSNL chairman and managing director AK Sinha, Trai has said that the number of PoIs having congestion has increased from 336 in January to 517 in April.
'The degree of congestion in many places is alarming. As of April, in 404 PoIs the degree of congestion is greater than 5%, in 264 PoIs it was more then 10%, in 101 PoIs it was more than 40%,' the TRAI said.
TRAI has also said what private operators have been saying all along: 'Most of the PoIs where the private mobile operators are facing congestion are with BSNL. The reason for increasing congestion with BSNL is due to the delay in provisioning the same by BSNL.'
More importantly, TRAI has also slammed BSNL over the fact that as many as 606 PoI requests from private operators were pending with the PSU, for which payments had been made.