The Kingdom of Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) is seeking explanations from the three mobile telephone operators about the growing number of complaints from subscribers about the call failures and dropped calls.
“The Authority requested each mobile network operators to investigate and report reasons for the level of “call failures” and “calls dropped” specific to their own networks and take appropriate action. The Authority will closely continue to monitor the evolution of quality of service indicators in coordination with the industry,” the TRA in statement said.
The TRA’s action was prompted by a recent increase in the number of consumer complaints; in particular consumers’ perception that voice quality has diminished, conducted has an audit assessing the quality of mobile Voice and mobile broadband services. “The Authority remains very attentive to consumers and understands the need for qualitative information,” it added.
Last week TRA formally notified the mobile network operators, following the results of the audit, as it is the duty of the Authority to carefully monitor, with the assistance of independent experts as appropriate, the effective quality delivered by mobile network operators in the Kingdom and to follow the evolution of quality over time as new technologies are being deployed.
Quality and availability of mobile telecommunications services is pertinent because of the increasing importance of digital communications in consumers’ daily activities, with mobile network operators providing consumers with round-the-clock access to key online resources such as education, information, culture and finance.
At industry level the audit conducted in May 2013 highlighted the following key points:
The observed rate of “calls failed” of around 2% and “calls dropped” of around 1% required immediate industry attention and action.
The percentage of successfully setup calls which were maintained for 2 minutes remains at 96.8%.However good results were obtained with 95.1% of calls achieving a perfect quality rating and 96.5% achieving a correct quality rating.
The measured average web downlink throughput increased significantly and ranges between 3,400 Kbps and 5,600 Kbps depending on the mobile network.