Reliance Jio dials TRAI, says 4G tariff hikes by Airtel, Vi will slow portability

Reliance Jio has registered a complaint to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea's recent 4G tariff hikes. The largest telco in India said that both its rivals have not offered SMS service in their cheapest plans to create a "porting barrier" and stop customers from porting out.

4G Tariff Hikes by Airtel, Vi a Bid to Stop Porting - Jio

Incidentally, all three of the telcos raised the prices across some of their respective bestselling 4G prepaid plans. Reliance Jio has raised the tariffs by 20%, so has Bharti Airtel, while Vodafone Idea has raised its prices by 25%. However, Airtel and Vi, while increasing the prices of their entry-level plans, have omitted SMS service from their cheapest plan. For Bharti Airtel, the cheapest plan with SMS has now become the Rs. 128, and for Vi, that plan is the Rs. 179 plan. Both the telcos have cheaper plans, but those plans don't come with SMS service. However, Jio offers SMS services in its cheapest plans as well, hence the reason for complaining. It also has been the telco benefitting the most from mobile number portability.

Notably, to apply for mobile number portability, a user has to send a request via SMS.

As such, Reliance Jio reached out to TRAI, which then had held a meeting with the two telcos. Interestingly, while Bharti Airtel expressed willingness to abide by the regulator's decision, Vodafone Idea opposed the move. It said that since tariffs are a telco's prerogative, so it has to right to decide. TRAI will make a decision on the matter in the coming days. According to sources aware of the events of the meeting, Reliance Jio had suggested three solutions regarding porting.

• First, the regulator should make porting SMSes free, irrespective of the plan.
• Second, the regulator can mandate SMS service across all plans offered by a telco.
• Third, a new mechanism for portability, one which does not require sending an SMS.

Telcos at odds again

Notably, this is not the first time telcos have been at odds regarding portability. Earlier this year, the sector regulator had banned telcos from making lucrative tariff offers, outside of their normal plans, to customers in order to lure customers in. In September, all three telcos lodged complaints against each other about such tariff offers. TRAI said that the offerings mentioned are “discriminatory” and “contravene” current pricing rules.

The sector regulator said that telcos can offer only the “tariffs, via their channel partners, distributors and third-party apps, that have been reported to the regulator, and to ensure these are compliant with extant regulations/directions,” with immediate effect. TRAI added, “all tariff offers (must) comply with extant TRAI regulations, directions, orders, (especially) where the TSP’s name, the brand is used for marketing/offering/selling products and services”.

On their part, the telcos tried to shift the blame; they said that the MNP-specific tariff plans “may have been given to customers by their channel partners without their consent”. However, TRAI said that it still remains the duty of the operator to ensure adherence to the guidelines. The regulator said it’s the considered view of the Authority that “MNP-specific tariff offers are violative of Clause 10 of TTO-1999,” which states that any “offering of differential tariff to subscribers porting from a network of another service provider is not a valid and reasonable classification as the motive is to induce churn from the competitors’ network, which is discriminatory”.