TRAI Demands Telcos to Publish Tariff Plans in Newspaper

The Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI) issued a Direction to all Telecom access service providers on ‘Publication of Tariff Plans’ in which TRAI demands the telecom operators to publish their tariff plans in the newspapers in a move that is likely to reduce some problems faced subscribers and also ensure transparency.

The regulatory body has of late come up with various consumer-friendly guidelines. It recently asked the telecom operators to provide call, SMS and data usage details to the pre-paid customers. The body also criticised the operators for levying extra charges during festival days.

[advt]The regulator said that the tariffs must be published in at least one regional and one English newspaper. It also directed the operators to publish the tariffs every six months. The TRAI has further asked the operators to publish tariffs in a specific format, which differentiates between pre-paid and post-paid plans, and helps easy comparison.

The salient features of this Direction are:

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 access service provider in a service area covering all tariff items along with tariff for the same in tabular formats at one place for facilitating easy comparison across tariff plans.
2. All the tariff plans shall be made available to the subscribers in the prescribed formats at the Customer Care Centres, points of sale/retail outlets as well as on the website of the Telecom access service 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 bythe 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. [source]