Mobile users can soon bid goodbye to confusion in selecting tariff plans as service providers would now be required to offer single digit schemes to choose from.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is soon likely to issue a directive to operators to reduce the number of tariff plans offered in any circle to a single digit from the present ceiling of up to 25 plans in each circle.
The regulator is also likely to direct the mobile operators to provide one standard plan to customers and provide a clear break-up of the total charges a client would have to pay in any tariff. This would do away away with the current labyrinth of data regarding charges and the subscribers would be able to get to know the outgo in each plan much more clearly.
The direction would be a follow-up of Trai’s consultation paper on the subject issued on January 29 for the second time. Earlier, Trai discussed the issue in 2004.
Amongst the biggies in the telecom sector, Vodafone-Essar offers as many as 22 different post-paid plans to the subscribers, and seven tariff packages for its pre-paid users. The country?s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel has 13 tariff plans for post-paid subscribers in Delhi, while in Mumbai it has 10 different plans.
In its second consultation paper released earlier this year, the regulator had clearly stated that, ?service providers have been given the flexibility to report their tariff plans to the Authority within seven days from the date of implementation after conducting a self-check with the relevant regulatory principles which inter-alia include tariffs being IUC compliant, non-predatory and non-discriminatory?.
The issue of making telecom services more consumer friendly and transparent to the users has been looming for a long time now, with the apex court late last year asking all service providers not to provide any chargeable value added services without the explicit consent of the users and paying the subscribers any amount charged without their explicit consent.