Pay full talk time to prepaid card subscribers: TRAI

Pulling the legs of telecom players who sneakily escape from the regulation for earning more profits, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday directed the players to improve transparency in tariff charges for providing better service.

The telecom regulator in this regard issued a Tariff Order and a Direction in the move of protecting the consumer’s interest that will come in effect from September 15, 2008.

In the issued tariff order, TRAI has directed all the mobile operators to provide full talk value except administrative fee and levied taxes that should not be above Rs.2 per recharge to all prepaid subscribers for their recharge.

At present, apart from some special tariff recharges no telecom operator provides full talk value to their customers. It deducts up to 30% from the total tariff amount in name of administrative fee, service charges and taxes. Moreover, it provides subsidised tariff rates on talk or SMS (Short Messaging Service) only at requesting the tariff reduction service to the operators by sending SMS.

In the interest of lifetime subscribers, TRAI has also directed the telecom players to allow the lifetime subscribers to switch to other cheaper plans by charging lower entry fee. Users will not have to make any additional payment or recharges for switching one plan to another. The lifetime subscribers will have to avail the outgoing or SMS service on higher tariff rate and those who were earlier unaware of higher tariff rate have complaint the regulator to not allowing to switch from this tariff plan.

TRAI has also provided some relief to lifetime subscribers who want to continue the plan. Now, the lifetime subscribers would continue to recharge once in every six months to sustain this plan. The operators, on the other hand were asking the government to shorten the time span to 60 days from existing 180-days. TRAI in this response has said that reducing the time duration would dilute the value of lifetime plan.

Commenting on Blackout days- the customary/festival days on which free/confessional calls/SMS are not available) TRAI has directed to reduced the number of Blackout days and restricted it to only 5 days in a calendar day which mobile players can opt for no tariff deduction on those days. TRAI has also added that the mobile operators will have to be pre-informed to their customers via SMS or voice calls.

The mobile subscribers will not force to change his/her existing mobile number when subscriber changes tariff plan or switch from prepaid to post paid connection or vice versa, as per the direction. There are nearby 92% of mobile users are pre-paid users in India and this move of TRAI will definitely benefit them.