TRAI recommends Rs. 10 lakh penalty for ISPs falsifying reports

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.