J’son & Partners Consulting - Russian Communication Industry: Key Tendencies
J’son & Partners Consulting presents short results of the research - Russian Communication Industry: Key Tendencies and Regulation Perspectives. Among the most “hot” topics are the followings: provision of quality of mobile communication and network neutrality, fight against SMS spam, and dishonest content providers, frequency regulation and sharing of infrastructure and radio frequencies, tariff regulation and others.
Quality of Communication Services
This question got into attention of Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, IT and Mass Communications) over 2 years ago, when claims from subscribers against communication services’ quality was 70% of total amount of claims. Main stream of claims was aimed at mobile communication quality in terms of MNP implementation and increasing competition (launch of fourth federal operator, MVNO projects), the topic of communication quality became crucial for operators.
It is important to say that the key disadvantage of current government standards in the sphere of communication services’ quality is the fact that they are non-regulatory. In addition to the existed legislative base, in December 2014 the Ministry of Communication approved the method of handling estimation tests of GSM 900/1800, UMTS 900/2100 and LTE networks on Russian territory and data processing as well. Afterwards, Roskomnadzor used this method on practice due to implementation of mobile complexes to control measurements in seven largest Russian cities: Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kazan, Ekateringburg, Krasnodar, Khabarovsk and Novosibirsk.
Research of communication services’ quality analysis conducted by Roskomnadzor by the Ministry of Communication method, first of all, aims at the research of objective indicators – technical parameters of services provision, which can be measured. To such parameters, in particular, belong voice services: share of unsuccessful attempts to establish voice connection, breaks of voice connections, average intelligibility of speech per connection, share of voice connection with low level of intelligibility, etc. Measurements are being conducted via certified equipment – mobile complexes for radio control, which cover only around 30-40% of coverage zone. It is also planned to use crowdsourcing model, when the quality of provided services is estimated by users via their devices (special app should be uploaded). As a result, trouble zones are being identified, to which, mobile radio control complexes are being sent, for more detailed research of the problem.
Regulator kept minimum level of some indicators in the method, not as a regulation value, not fulfillment of which follows by sanctions, but rather as an indication point. Results of field studies’ quality parameters by the method of the Ministry of Communication are being published in open sources (on web-site: http://качествосвязи.рф), which is according to Roskomnadzor’s plan should include market mechanisms, which could stimulate operators to improve communication services in terms of mobile communication market saturation and further growth of competition. Refusal from legislative administration of communication services quality parameters was chosen, also because of regulator’s fears that by implementation of threshold numbers during estimation of communication quality, it is more profitable for operators not to develop networks in low-inhabitant cities. Besides, large share of claims are out of operators’ control – for example those, which are connected to the failures of subscriber’s devices, purchased not via operator.
