While the telecom operators promise 4G internet speed even in hills, consumers feel betrayed as they get stuck in long buffering in reality. The telecom regulator authority of India (TRAI) has on Tuesday launched an application named My Speed App that will help users to check how much internet speed they are getting from their operator against how much they were promised.

The mobile application that can be downloaded by both android and IOS users will show downloading speed, data speed and network coverage area of their operators as well as of other operators in their area. Moreover, the application will show top three service providers in the users’ area and data speed they are actually providing on real time basis, helping users to compare and choose between different service providers.

“This is just the beginning of number of steps that TRAI is taking to increase transparency in the telecom sector,” said RS Sharma, chairman, TRAI. “A healthy competition among service providers will hopefully be encouraged among service providers in order to perform better,” he said further.

The application will run in the background of users’ mobile phone and data collected from it will go to TRAI. Senior officials from TRAI confirmed that no personal information of users will be collected and data received by the regulator will be anonymous.

The data collected from individual apps can also be viewed on the website named analytical.trai.gov.in.

However, at present, the regulator, based on the results collected from the mobile app cannot penalise poorly performing operators.
“There is no benchmark set on minimum data speed. But TRAI is working on it and soon there will be a consultation process on it. Until then penalising operators on their poor performance based on data collected from the app is out of question,” said Sharma.