TRAI Bans Telcos and Partners from Making Differential Tariff Offers

On Thursday evening, TRAI has said that it will bar telcos and their partners from making any differential tariff plans. Notably, telcos have employed this tactic to attract customers via mobile number portability.

TRAI Bans Differential Tariff Offers

A senior TRAI official said that the move came after all three telcos lodged complaints against each other about such tariff offers. TRAI said that 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, brand is used for marketing/offering/selling products and services".

Being cognizant of the complaints, TRAI mentioned the same in the direction; it said that some telcos 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”.

Jio and Airtel on the Attack

Over the last few months, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have become more and more aggressive in their marketing. Both the telcos are vying to capture as many of the struggling Vodafone Idea's customers as possible.

Incidentally, both the telcos also have huge co-branding projects in the pipeline; Jio has introduced new plans with Disney+Hotstar subscription, and Airtel has rebooted its older campaign with PepsiCo.