After Reliance Jio filed an accusation against fellow operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have now said that it will investigate the new offers introduced by other telecom operators.
TRAI Chairman RS Sharmasaid to PTI, “If these complaints have come, we will certainly look into them. Because the tariff has to satisfy the criteria of being transparent and being non-discriminatory. So these principles have to be followed…we will look into that.”
These accusations were made after operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular introduced customised plans to retain their customers who were leaving them for another network. Reliance Jio claims that these operators are misleading their customers by offering a different offer to each customer who is planning to leave their network. These offers are never made available to general public, hence, being unfair to other users. For instance, if I being an Airtel user, plans to leave my present network for say Reliance Jio, Airtel will offerme certain benefits which are not available to anyone else.
However, TRAI Chairman, RS Sharma said, “If someone tries to leave, people will tell him ours is the best network, that is part of the business. (But) I don’t think any operator should be giving a plan which is not given to TRAI…or is not a part of their standard set of plans.”
As per Reliance Jio, operators like Airtel and Vodafone have crossed the limit of 25 plans (including both Prepaid and Postpaid) which breaches the regulations imposed by TRAI. However, the fellow operators have denied Reliance Jio’s allegations claiming otherwise.
Not only this, Reliance Jio also separately accused Airtel earlier this month for discriminating its customers based on certain criteria. To avail these offers, one needs to have a 4G SIM along with a 4G handset. As per Jio, this is Airtel’s attempt to add more customers to the basket and making all its customers believe that the benefit will include 1GB Mobile Data per day along with free calls for 70 days. However, you actually require a 4G handset with 4G SIM running on it.