Telco operators reject quality of service norms for 5G slicing

New Delhi: Telecom operators such as Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea jointly pushed back against the telecom regulator's draft proposals on quality of service (QoS) norms for commercial 5G network slicing, calling for the proposed resource utilisation benchmarks to be dropped entirely even as public advocacy groups said they can be retained.

In August, the telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai) released draft guidelines for telcos to deploy 5G network slicing-based use-cases to ensure that the dynamic resource allocation technology does not degrade service quality for general subscribers, amidst a debate around net neutrality.

Trai had proposed measuring quality of service by monitoring use of telecom resources in areas where slicing is activated, proposing that radio resources can't exceed 80% utilisation to ensure there is breathing room when telcos divide the physical resource blocks to deliver specialised services.


Telcos opposed the move entirely, arguing that physical resource blocks utilisation is an internal radio-resource and input indicator, rather than a customer-facing quality of service metric. Actual customer impact is being captured via metrics such as speed and throughput.

In its written comments as part of the stakeholder consultation by the Trai, Bharti Airtel said higher PRB utilisation does not mean poor QoS and setting an arbitrary 80% utilisation ceiling penalises operators for efficiently using scarce spectrum resources. Airtel added that imposing a rigid cell-level threshold will create artificial network constraints on operators, forcing them to prematurely augment capacity and misallocate capital expenditure on cells that are already delivering satisfactory throughput.

Reliance Jio added that the 80% threshold as a mandatory trigger to suspend network slices is operationally unfeasible. Jio said modern 5G networks employ technologies specifically designed to trigger at high utilisation levels to ensure efficient spectrum utilisation.

Jio argued that restricting slicing based on resource utilisation levels ties auctioned spectrum to a specific service category, violating spectrum assignment conditions, technology neutrality, and ease of doing business. However, public policy think tanks such as The Dialog agreed with Trai that the proposal of measuring QoS through capacity utilisation levels benchmark acts as a vital capacity safeguard to prevent slices from degrading the network. However, Trai should also use other means to measure impact.

GSMA argued that PRB utilisation is a useful internal planning indicator, but it should not be used in isolation as a regulatory measure of congestion or QoS. It said high utilisation during a cell's busiest hour does not prove that users are experiencing poor service, or whether a particular slice caused the load, or immediate capacity augmentation is justified.

Vi opposed imposing such thresholds on cell-level, adding slicing as a tool is meant to be used when resources are constrained. When spare capacity is available, all users access the network at the highest possible throughput, linking slices to a utilisation threshold is technically unjustified.