TRAI notified new quality of service rules for broadband on 2 August 2024. They came into force on 1 October 2024, and they carry money penalties.
The four numbers
Four numbers decide most of it for a fibre ISP.
| Number | What it measures | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours | Mean time to repair, averaged over the quarter | Regulation 4(1), row (v) |
| 85% | Faults repaired by the next working day | Regulation 9(1), row (viii) |
| 3 working days | A fault pending longer than this owes a rebate | Schedule-I, paragraph 3.2.2(v) |
| 4 hours | A district outage this long is reportable to TRAI | Regulation 6(1), row (iv) |
Read the third column carefully. Two of those four sit in tables written for a different service. Regulation 9(1) is the broadband (wireline) table, and fibre falls under it. Regulation 4(1) is the access service (wireline) table. The 10 hour mean time to repair lives there. Regulation 6(1) is the access service (wireless) table. The 4 hour district outage clause lives there. The broadband (wireline) table carries neither row.
The full broadband (wireline) list
Regulation 9(1) sets nine benchmarks. Each is assessed quarterly. The values below are the regulation's own.
| Row | Parameter | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| (i) | Provision of a service within seven (7) working days of payment of demand note by the customer | ≥ 98% |
| (ii) | Latency | ≤ 50 msec |
| (iii) | Packet Drop Rate | ≤ 1% |
| (iv) | Percentile value of measured test samples for which download and upload speed is ≥ offered typical download and upload speed in tariff offerings | 90th percentile |
| (v) | Maximum Bandwidth utilization of any Customer serving node to ISP Gateway Node [Intra-network] or Internet Exchange Point Link(s) | ≤ 80% |
| (vi) | Jitter | ≤ 40ms |
| (vii) | Fault incidences (No. of faults per 100 subscribers) | ≤ 5 |
| (viii) | Fault repair by next working day | ≥ 85% |
| (ix) | Fault repair within three working days | ≥ 99% |
An explanation under the table settles the medium. It reads: "For the purposes of this regulation, broadband (Wireline) service shall include all fixed wireless and wireline medium including copper, fibre, cables etc."
How the clock is counted
Three rules in Schedule-I change what your own numbers mean.
Paragraph 3.2.2(iii). "For calculating the performance against above-mentioned parameters, only those complaints, which were registered till the close of the business hours (i.e., 6 PM) of that day, will be considered. Complaints registered after business hours will be taken as being registered on the next day's business hours."
Paragraph 3.2.3(ii), on mean time to repair. "For counting the repair time of each fault, only working hours (i.e., 8 AM to 6 PM) shall be taken into consideration. The duration shall be from the time of lodging of the complaint till the time of repair of the fault, excluding non-working hours."
Paragraph 5.2.3(b)(iii) of the explanatory memorandum. "Here, it is clarified that for assessing the performance against these parameters number of working days taken to rectify a fault shall be counted. However, for computing the applicable rent rebate, delay will be counted in number of actual days and not working days."
So one fault has two clocks. The benchmark counts working days. The rebate counts calendar days.
What it costs to miss
Two things are owed. Money to TRAI, and money back to the customer.
The rebate to the customer
Schedule-I, paragraph 3.2.2(v) sets the rebate for a slow repair.
"In case, fault remains pending for more than three working days, then in case of post-paid subscribers, rent rebate proportional to actual number of days, during which fault remained pending, shall be credited to the customer account. Further, in the case of pre-paid subscribers, validity of the subscribed tariff offering shall be increased for the actual number of days, during which fault remained pending. The rent-rebate/ validity extension, as applicable, shall be made within one week from the date of rectification of fault and the rent rebate shall be reflected in the next bill."
A long outage carries its own rebate. Schedule-I, paragraph 4.1.3(iii) covers a significant network outage past 24 hours. It owes a proportional rent rebate to postpaid subscribers in the affected district. Prepaid subscribers get their validity extended by the same number of days. Paragraph 4.1.3(iv) adds a rounding rule: "The outage duration of more than 12 hours in a calendar day shall be considered equal to one full day for the calculation of rent rebate or extension of validity." Paragraph 4.1.3(v) allows recorded force majeure to be excluded.
That outage clause is written for access service (wireless). Paragraph 4.1.3(i) defines the outage in terms of cells in a district. A fibre ISP has no cells, so read this one with your licence in hand.
The reporting duty
Paragraph 4.1.3(ii) sets the deadline. It reads: "All such SNOs shall be reported to the Authority within 24 Hrs. from the start of any such outage. After restoration of the outage, the service provider shall report the summary of root cause along with details of action taken."
The penalties
| Failure | Amount | Clause |
|---|---|---|
| Missing a benchmark, first time | up to Rs 1 lakh per benchmark | 16(1) |
| Missing the same benchmark, second time running | up to Rs 2 lakh | 16(1) |
| Each consecutive miss after that | up to Rs 3 lakh | 16(1) |
| A false compliance report, first time | up to Rs 2 lakh per benchmark | 16(2) |
| A false report, second time running | up to Rs 5 lakh | 16(2) |
| Each consecutive false report after that | up to Rs 10 lakh | 16(2) |
| Failing to submit a compliance report | up to Rs 5,000 per report per day | 17(1) |
Regulation 17(1) caps the late filing amount at Rs 10 lakh. Regulation 16(3) and the proviso to 17(1) both promise a hearing first. Regulation 18(1) adds interest on an unpaid amount after twenty one days.
Does this bind an ISP under 10,000 subscribers?
The applicability clause is regulation 1(3). It names four kinds of licence and authorisation, then adds a proviso.
"Provided that nothing contained in these regulations shall apply to an Internet Service Provider whose total number of subscribers as on last day of the preceding financial year does not exceed ten thousand or as notified by Authority by an order or direction."
Read plainly, that proviso exempts a small ISP. Three things keep the question open.
- The proviso names an Internet Service Provider. Regulation 1(3) also covers a Unified Licence with access service authorisation. Which one you hold decides which half applies to you.
- The count is taken on the last day of the preceding financial year. Crossing 10,000 in March pulls you in for the year that follows.
- The words "or as notified by Authority by an order or direction" let TRAI move the line without a new regulation.
Do not rely on this page for that answer. Read regulation 1(3) against your own licence, or ask ISPAI, before you decide. Your licence conditions can also demand things this regulation does not.
What the rule expects you to have
Strip the clause numbers away and three obligations remain.
- A log with a start, an end and a cause for every outage. Paragraph 4.1.3(ii) wants a root cause summary after restoration. Paragraph 3.2.2(iv) wants force majeure details kept on file, if you exclude any.
- A repair time you can compute. Paragraph 3.2.3(i) divides total repair hours by faults cleared. You cannot divide what you never wrote down.
- A way to know an outage started before a customer reports it. The 6 PM cutoff in paragraph 3.2.2(iii) rewards an early start. Find a fault at 5 PM and the clock starts today. Take the call at 7 PM and it starts tomorrow.
Regulation 3(1) goes further. It asks every service provider for a quality management plan within six months. The plan must adopt Six Sigma practices. Regulation 3(4) asks for a yearly report on that plan. Regulation 13(2) asks for a system for live monitoring of network availability.
Where HansaNet fits. Every outage gets a start, an end and a name. It is confirmed in about a minute. The crew is paged on WhatsApp. The log exports as a file you can attach to a filing. See outage detection and uptime reports.
In their own words
The gazette prints what operators told TRAI before the rules were set. Two passages are worth reading.
Paragraph 5.2.3(a), on fault repair. "Some of the stakeholders submitted that there are several other practical problems faced by operators at the time of fault repair, and sometimes leads to more than 15 days. For example: customer availability at home, repeated rescheduling of appointment by the customer, delay in permission for digging, cable theft/ burnt, approval time to procure the material. Considering above constrains there should not be any rent rebate."
TRAI kept the rebate. It cut four proposed repair parameters down to two.
Paragraph 5.3.3(a)(vi), on outage reporting. "One of the stakeholders submitted that without a validated way to understand when end users are impacted, operators might simply not report the smaller outages in the hope that they go unnoticed."
Subscribers put the same thing differently. A LocalCircles survey in April 2025 covered 333 districts and over 140,000 respondents. It reported that 51% of users wait more than 24 hours for a repair. It reported that 7% wait a week or more. It reported that 66% would switch provider. Uptime and quality was the first reason at 24%. Speed followed at 22%, then price at 18%.
The scale you are filing against
TRAI's performance indicator report for June 2026 gives the backdrop. India had 46.51 million wired broadband subscribers. The top five operators held 98.63% of all internet subscribers. Only 108 ISPs above 10,000 subscribers file the quarterly quality reports.
Two penalty figures have been reported in the press, not by TRAI directly. Lapaas Voice reported in 2026 that TRAI collected Rs 1.9 crore in quality fines during FY26. PSU Connect reported that MTNL Mumbai filed a mean time to repair of 131.24 hours. The benchmark is 10 hours. It reported a Rs 6 lakh wireline penalty. Treat both as reported, and check the filing yourself before quoting either.
Sources
- Primary. TRAI, Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wireline and Wireless) and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024 (06 of 2024). Notified 2 August 2024, in force 1 October 2024. Every clause quoted above comes from this gazette text. trai.gov.in. Read 17 September 2026.
- Primary. TRAI, quarterly performance indicator report, June 2026. Source of the 46.51 million, 98.63% and 108 ISP figures. trai.gov.in. Read 17 September 2026.
- Primary. LocalCircles, India broadband service survey, April 2025. The survey publisher's own release, 140,000 plus respondents across 333 districts. localcircles.com. Read 17 September 2026.
- Reported. Lapaas Voice, on Rs 1.9 crore collected in service quality fines in FY26. lapaasvoice.com. Read 17 September 2026.
- Reported. PSU Connect, on the MTNL penalty and the 131.24 hour filing. psuconnect.in. Read 17 September 2026.
Put a box in your rack tonight.
Rs 3 a home a month. Rs 2,000 opens the account as credit and every rupee of it goes on your own bills. Refer an ISP and get Rs 1,000 in credit when they activate their account. Nothing is installed on your OLT.