TRAI to raise protection period for tariff hike

In a bid to protect the consumers, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday released a proposal for increasing the ‘minimum protection period’- the period which ensures the customers to receive no hiking in any sort of tariff charges before the defined time- from six months to one year from the date of enrollment into tariff plan.

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The regulator has asked for the opinions of stakeholders on this issue and on the basis of their received feedback, TRAI will move to amend the existing provisions of Telecommunications Tariff Order, 1999, which will enhance the transparency in the tariff offers in access service provision.

This move of TRAI is the part of earlier issued consultation paper seeking opinions, complains and suggestions of the customers regarding the service of their service providers. The issued consultation paper entitled ‘Issues Arising out of Plethora of Tariff Offers in Access Service Provision’ was followed by Open House Discussions (OHD) in Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

So, on the basis of received feedback so far, TRAI has released a proposal in which, besides the proposal of enhancing ‘minimum protection period’ from existing six months to one year, TRAI has also included the ‘Life Time’ consumers as well as longer periods of validity subscribers. Both of them will get the protection as per their plan validity period.

“In cases of straight tariff reductions, where the declared intention of the operator is to extend the benefit to all subscribers without any attached liabilities, there shall not be any pre-condition of explicit positive action on the part of subscribers,” suggested TRAI.

This proposal has been suggested in the wake of recent announcements made by Vodafone and Idea, which have reduced the domestic long distance charges if the subscriber request for it through an SMS.

Moreover, TRAI has also stated that no fixed fee other than applicable taxes should be levied on recharges exclusively meant for provision of talk time value. However, it also added that the service providers could charge a nominal fee upto Rs. 2 per top up in account of administrative costs, which was earlier not defined and service providers were free to charges accordingly.

TRAI has also specified that it would the duty of the service providers to inform their clients about the expiry of validity before its termination period.

TRAI has also proposed that no charges should be levied on those migrate subscribers who are already subscribing lifetime validity plan or unlimited validity plan but want to switch to other more beneficial life time or unlimited validity plan with lower entry fee. “The service provider shall not levy any upfront payment or recurring charges or fee for allowing such migration.” TRAI stated.