The Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI) issues direction to all Telecom service providers on “Publication of Tariff Plans” in which TRAI demands the telecom operators to publish their tariff plans in the newspapers to reduce problems faced subscribers and maintain transparency.
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 in format which differentiates between pre-paid and post-paid plans.
The salient features of this Direction are:
- 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 coveringall tariff items along with tariff for the same in tabular formats at one place for facilitating easy comparison across tariff plans.
- 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.
- 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;
- 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 providecompliance to the TRAI.