Saturday, 28 April 2012

On the auction of 2G spectrum

On the auction of 2G spectrum, the Government today said it is difficult to predict likely changes in call rates of mobile telephones in the wake of cancellation of 122 licenses as per Supreme Court verdict. This is because, as per the current Tariff framework, call rates of mobile services are under forbearance except for national roaming where ceiling tariff has been specified. Mobile operators have the flexibility to offer different tariffs depending on the market conditions and the other commercial considerations.

In Rajya Sabha today, the Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sh Milind Deora said in order to protect the interest of the consumers, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated the following stipulations:-

1) No tariff items in the tariff plans shall be increased

i) in respect of tariff plans with prescribed periods of validity of more than six months including tariff plans with lifetime or unlimited validity during the entire period of validity specified in the tariff plan;

ii) in respect of other tariff plans, within six months from the dated of enrollment of the subscriber: and,

iii) in case of recharge coupons with a validity of more than six months under any tariff plan, during the entire period of validity of such recharge coupon.

2) Not more than 25 tariff plans are allowed to be offered by a service provider for a particular service at any given point of time.

3) The tariffs are reported to TRAI within 7 days of implementation. The tariff reports are subjected to scrutiny in order to ensure that they are in compliance with regulatory requirements. Also, whenever tariffs are revised upward, it is ensured that these are not applied to subscribers who enjoy tariff protection as per the provisions of tariff orders issued by TRAI.

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