Telcos urge regulator to stay away from tariff validity plans

Reliance Jio, and have urged the telecom regulator not to intervene in fixing prepaid tariff validity spans and hold the matter below forbearance, saying any such intervention could be unwarranted and will disrupt and destabilise cell tariff constructions, hurting customers.

Market chief, Jio, although, has steered that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) challenge an advisory calling on telcos to supply a minimum of one prepaid plan voucher (PV), particular tariff voucher (STV) and combo voucher (CV) with 30-day validity to handle client complaints across the 28-day packs.

In its dialogue paper, issued final month, Trai had mentioned it was awash with complaints from numerous cell customers that they felt cheated as they had been being made to do 13 recharges in a yr for month-to-month plans.

In this context, Jio, in its submission to the regulator, mentioned it has launched “additional prepaid tariffs with validity of 30/60/90 days,” that may handle issues raised in client representations obtained by Trai”.

Leading cell client affiliation, Consumer Voice, although, is skeptical, and steered that Trai “standardise all tariff validity spans to either “1 day / 7 days / 15 days and 1 month variants,” and make all different validity intervals in the market, invalid. “A one-month validity should mean renewal due on the same date of the following month,” mentioned the buyer physique in its submission.

Telcos, although, have dismissed the suggestion, saying it could be technically infeasible to provide you with prepaid plans requiring a recharge on the identical date each month. They added that such a transfer would additionally go towards client behaviour as many prepaid customers, usually, the worth hunters, decide to recharge 2-3 days after the expiry date to avail of the grace interval.

Bharti Airtel, in its submission to the regulator, mentioned “the extant policy of forbearance on setting validity of tariff should continue, as a selective ex-ante intervention on one particular non-price aspect of tariff framework, i.e. validity, would force service providers to adjust or rebalance other important price aspects of tariff”.

Jio backed the view, saying operators can ill-afford to scale back ARPUs, and so, “realigning the validity of current recharges would not make any business sense and force them to come up with new price-points”. Such a state of affairs, it warned, would lead to disruption and confuse customers used to their most popular recharges and drive them to align their telecom spends to new recharges.

Vodafone Idea mentioned any change to present 28/56/84 days prepaid tariff validity construction could be a large one that may “require gigantic efforts in terms of consumer awareness, configurations in billing systems, publications in own and third-party channels and retail channel education”.

Last month, Trai had sought stakeholder views on whether or not to intervene in figuring out the validity interval of prepaid tariff gives or hold the matter below the forbearance regime. It had additionally sought views on whether or not telcos should be “mandated to supply their PVs, STVs and CVs for particular durations.
The current forbearance regime offers telcos the liberty to design tariffs (together with validity spans) suited to prevailing market situations, although it’s topic to reporting necessities and adherence to the ideas of tariff assessments, as in transparency, non-discrimination and non-predation.

Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea additionally urged Trai to “see all tariff-related issues holistically,” and initially conclude the pending session on flooring pricing for knowledge providers on precedence. In the aftermath of the AGR funds disaster, telcos had earlier requested Trai to repair a flooring value just for knowledge providers for an interim interval to guarantee their sustainability and hold competitors alive. Aaj Ka-Samachar