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Journalism of Courage
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has widened its probe in the matter of predatory pricing and unlimited offers, by including all the tariff plans — past as well as present — of all the operators. This will include not only their 4G plans (and 5G in some cases) but even 2G and 3G plans.
Officials said that the idea is to find out whether all operators have violated the regulatory guidelines at some point of time by offering either ‘unlimited’ plans or indulged in any form of predatory pricing. “It needs to be found out when did it all start and who were the first ones to start,” officials said. This will be the first time that the regulator has started such a comprehensive probe into all past tariff plans by the operators.
Though tariffs are under forbearance, Trai examines them generally a week after the new plans are filed with it. Officials conceded that Trai may have missed spotting any such violations, if it happened in the past.
The examination of the plans started with the 5G plans of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel upon a complaint by Vodafone Idea that the two were offering unlimited data plans as part of their services. Further, it alleged that 5G services were being offered at 4G rates, and this amounted to predatory pricing.
However, now even Vodafone is being probed whether it is offering unlimited data plans or did so in the past. Even state-owned BSNL’s plans are being looked into, officials said.
The regulator had decided to direct Jio and Bharti to stop offering unlimited data in their 5G tariff plans, but the two informed it that even Vodafone Idea was guilty of the same in its 4G plans. The Trai has, however rejected Vodafone Idea’s allegation that Jio and Bharti are indulging in predatory pricing by offering 5G at 4G rates, as their tariffs are not below cost.
“Vodafone Idea today does not have a significant market share of 30% in majority of the circles, but it had in the past. It is therefore necessary to find out whether it indulged in predatory pricing in the past,” officials said. Any order on predatory pricing/unlimited offers need to be all comprehensive, hence the probe has been widened and will look into all the past offers also by the operators, officials added.
As part of the their tariff plans, operators put a cap on data usage by consumers. Upon launching their 5G services, Jio and Bharti did not put such a cap on data usage. Even if the caps are placed, it would not make sense since subscribers will not be able to consume their daily or monthly limits, the operators have said.
However, according to Trai, even then unlimited data is against regulatory guidelines and should be stopped. FE
