India's telecom service quality needs to improve: Gartner

India's telecom service quality needs to improve: Gartner:

Business India: Mumbai, Feb 25 : India needs to focus on improving consistency in telecom service quality to support its aim to become an outsourcing hub, tech industry research major Gartner said Friday.

It said in a study that India had made big improvements in international and domestic long-distance services in 2004 despite a complex regulatory environment, an uneven playing field and limited compebreastion.

"The biggest improvement was in voice services. Prices have dropped dramatically to the point where India is compebreastive compared with developed markets," said Kobita Desai, Gartner's principal analyst (Telecom).

"Service quality, a major problem in the past, has also improved significantly, but it's not consistent enough for large companies," she said in a statement issued here.

According to the Gartner report, the service quality in India still lags behind many other countries, including some developing markets.

This problem is particularly evident in data services, whose service quality has been diminished by problems in the last mile, it added.

India needs to quickly address this problem because reliability is more important than low prices, especially for foreign companies outsourcing their IT operations to India, said the report.

"The focus now should be on improving provisioning and service quality that are needed to support India's aim to become an IT and outsourcing hub," said Desai.

The market needs to have at least three major providers, world-clbutt service quality, and very compebreastive pricing, she added.

Gartner said domestic long distance and international services in India were moving from an environment of limited compebreastion towards full compebreastion.

Aggressive compebreastion and proactive intervention by regulators to reduce prices has been instrumental in making this shift, it said.

"Ironically, there is no real choice of service providers as carrier access codes need to be implemented and alternative carriers prefer to focus on mobile services.

"However, users benefit from low prices as a result of strong indirect compebreastion from mobile services. Service quality has improved significantly, but service consistency is not yet up to business standards."

Noting that India has taken big steps to liberalise its telecom market in the last two years, the research agency said continued efforts were needed to create a more level playing field.

"This will heighten the compebreastion, which is needed to improve service quality and pricing further," said the report.

--Indo-Asian News Service