Trai Asks Jio To Revamp Exclusive Plans For Jio Bharat, Jio Phone By April 14

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the country’s telecom regulator, has directed Reliance Jio to discontinue some tariff practices which the regulator found to be discriminatory in nature.

Trai has given the country’s largest telecom operator time till April 14 to comply with the regulator’s directive, according to a report by Mint.

The latest development has come as a result of Trai’s probe initiated in August last year regarding Jio discontinuing some entry-level prepaid plans offering 1 GB data per day.

Jio had claimed that these plans were available only through its retail stores. Trai’s probe found that special tariff vouchers (STVs) of Rs 249 and Rs 199 were available only through Jio Stores. Also, a plan of Rs 209 STV could be accessed only through the MyJio mobile application.

The regulator said that such limited availability practices violate the principle of transparency as these plans were not accessible across all platforms, including retail outlets, customer care centres, websites, and apps.

It said that these tactics were a violation of Trai’s September 2020 direction, which had mandated telecom companies to publish tariff plans across all platforms for consumers.

The regulator also questioned Jio’s device-specific tariffs such as plans available only for JioPhone and JioBharat feature phones.

Trai termed this practice as “discriminatory”. These low-cost 4G devices come bundled with exclusive recharge plans that are not available to users on other smartphones.

Trai was of the view that such restrictions violate the principle of non-discrimination. It asked the telecom major to discontinue such practices.

“The availability of tariff offers across all platforms is imperative,” Trai said, adding that forcing customers to visit different channels for different plans goes against the spirit of the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999.

Jio argued that Trai’s 2020 directives only pertained to tariff publication and were not related to the sale of tariffs. It also said that device-specific tariffs for JioPhone and JioBharat plans were based on a distinct user segment and, hence, were not arbitrary.

However, the regulator dismissed these arguments, saying that publication and availability of tariffs were “inherently interconnected” and cannot be treated separately.