The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will investigate customised offers introduced by some network operators to retain subscribers who want to shift to a rival network.
According to TRAI chairman RS Sharma, operators must make all their offerings transparent and non-discriminatory while they should also be filed with the telecom regulator. Sharma made the statement while revealing TRAI's views on Reliance Jio's recent accusation that some of its rival operators are introducing customised retention offers for subscribers, who are looking to leave their network and join others.
"If these complaints have come, we will certainly look into them. Because the tariff has to satisfy the criteria of being transparent and being non-discriminatory. So these principles have to be followed...we will look into that," PTI quoted Sharma as saying.
Jio sent a letter to TRAI last month, claiming that incumbent operators were presenting "unfair and deceptive" offers to customers "surreptitiously" on one-to-one basis while not making them available to the general public. Jio also said that such offers were not being publicised on the companies' website, and demanded the "strongest action" against Airtel, Idea and Vodafone for allegedly violating TRAI's norms.
"If someone tries to leave, people will tell him ours is the best network, that is part of the business. (But) I don't think any operator should be giving a plan which is not given to TRAI...or is not a part of their standard set of plans," Sharma said, adding that the regulator would have to consider every complaint and take the necessary action.
Jio alleged in its complaint that rival operators had breached the limit of 25 plans – including prepaid and postpaid – allowed as indicated by TRAI regulations for operators. Airtel and Vodafone, on the other hand, denied Jio's allegations claiming they were following all of the regulatory guidelines.
According to the latest data released by TRAI, as many as 5.67 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February 2017. With this, the total MNP requests increased from 261.06 million at the end of January to 266.73 million at the end of February, since the implementation of service.
At the end of February, the top five service providers constituted 86.76 percent of market share of the total broadband subscribers. The newcomer Reliance Jio led the pack with 102.84 million subscribers, followed by Bharti Airtel (46.69 million), Vodafone (32.06 million), Idea Cellular (24.31 million) and BSNL (20.81 million).
