From an Indian mobile consumer point of view, last few months have been great. TRAI has been coming up quite a few directives that are pro-consumers. At the same time, for telecom companies, it is a nightmarish period – these new TRAI directives are adding to their woes on already burdened Telco’s.
The new directive released by TRAI on 16th January 2012, make it compulsory for Indian Telecom companies have to adhere to certain rules and regulation while Publishing their Tariff Plans. These directive were put into place based on extensive consultations & Open House discussions.
Highlights of new guidelines released by TRAI
1.) All the tariff plans meant for pre-paid and post-paid subscribers shall be published in separate formats. These formats shall contain all the tariff plans offered by the Telecom provider in a service area covering all tariff items along with tariff for the same in proper tabular formats at one place for easy comparison of tariff plans.
2.) All the tariff plans shall be made available to the subscribers in the prescribed formats at their Customer Care Centres, points of sale / retail outlets as well as online on the website of the Telecom Provider.
3.) The Telecom access service provider shall ensure that the tariff plans published in the prescribed formats are updated on their website and customer care centre every time there is a change in any of the tariff plans, and make available the updated tariff plans in these formats by the 7th day of January, April, July and October at their points of sale and retail outlets.
4.) The Telecom access service provider have been mandated to publish all the tariff plans in prescribed formats in at least one regional language and one English newspaper at an interval not more than six month and provide compliance to the TRAI.
TRAI has been pushing for a improved transparency amongst the telecom providers and the directives passed by them recently clearly point to the fact that they want to make life easier for mobile consumers. Having said that, I believe TRAI needs to be more access provider friendly – and needs to introduce policies that help telecom providers as well!
What do you think?
What about the corporate CUG plans?
It’d be nightmarish if companies are asked to publish each and every corporate plan and its variant in newspaper.