The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has started to conduct a series of periodic surveys to determine the quality of services rendered by telecommunications operators across developing areas in the country. The surveys place key focus on testing, measuring and analyzing the services to identify weaknesses and addressing the issues in coordination with local operators. The TRA has taken this pro-active step to avoid the accumulation of complaints from local subscribers. The move is part of the second phase of the TRA's ‘Taghtia’ initiative, which was launched last year. ‘Taghtia’ aims to achieve customer satisfaction and happiness via protecting the interests of these subscribers; upgrading the services of the UAE's telecommunications segment and providing quick response actions to breakdowns and other network problems.
Focused heavily on the country's developing areas, the second phase of ‘Taghtia’ will include a wider range of internal and external field surveys designed to assess the services of communications networks in areas like shopping malls, service centres, government offices, convention centres, stadiums, etc. According to the TRA, the second phase looks towards reaching out to local subscribers even before complaints on services are made, which will be done through the conducting of parodic surveys and sending of analytical reports to service providers so that they can immediately address the weaknesses and improve the quality of the services they render. In response, the service providers will issue their proposed action plans to the TRA, covering how they will address the issues along with periodic reports on the level of the coverage for each network in these various areas. These reports will be made available to the public on the TRA website and on various media portals.
H.E. Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA Director General, stressed that the TRA remains fully committed towards protecting the interests of subscribers with top priority placed in achieving their full satisfaction and happiness for the services offered by the telecommunications sector. He pointed out that the TRA promotes the concept of healthy competition among local service providers through the continuous efforts of informing the public about the quality of services in developing areas. The TRA's initiative is being implemented under the guidance of H.H. Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President, who has constantly emphasized on the improvement and rendering of high-quality, world class services in developing areas and cities.
For his part, Mohammed Al Saadi, Manager Telecom Networks Operations in TRA, said: “TRA has already begun the operations of periodic and semi-permanent monitoring to assess the quality of services of communications networks in the UAE, focusing on developing areas.”
He noted that monitoring the efficiency of the network has begun since the launch of the ‘Taghtia’ initiative last year, where the surveys used to include internal and external areas using special devices. However, a general survey was already conducted to determine a specific way to monitor the quality of the network, without measuring the level of quality inside buildings.
The TRA has identified a set of standards by which the quality of the service of licensed operators is being assessed, which covers key points like the quality of voice services, data services that include measuring the level of mobile phone coverage, the success rate of completing calls, the success rate of making mobile phone calls and the percentage of calls outages ensuring that these available services meet the expectations of customers.
Last year, the TRA launched the first phase of ‘Taghtia,’ which was aimed at developing a smart and innovative IT system. The initial phase of the initiative covered a series of field surveys to test, measure and analyze the quality of networks of mobile operators in the UAE and simulate the users' experience. One of the first objectives set by ‘Taghtia’ was the development of a smart system that can be installed in cars. The system transmits the data that have been monitored automatically and displays them in a special control room of the TRA where the networks data of operators are analyzed and used to follow up on the problems of different networks and solving them in the least time possible in coordination with the operators. Reports on the performance of networks will be issued on a regular basis and sharing them with the service providers to identify the issues related to the performance and development of networks, thus improving the services provided to individuals and institutions customers.
The TRA completed the first phase of the project, which included the development of the basic infrastructure of the basic system (hardware and software) infrastructure, data storage, units of data collection (office environment, wall video monitors and applications), and elevating the efficiency of the hardware to be able to generate data in certain areas. The TRA has also started on expanding the project work through the second phase, which includes dynamic and different areas in the UAE, as well as simulating experiences and posting results on an internal survey of the number of buildings and main establishments across the UAE.
