There has long been heated controversy surrounding consumer rights in the telecom industry after Raghav Chadha called for urgent changes in how mobile data is consumed and marketed. The AAP leader said: “Unused mobile data should not simply be put on zero at the end of the day but is transferred to other individuals or to another device” in all countries.
A common issue many people deal with nowadays in mobile usage, Chadha pointed out the inefficiencies in the current billing systems. “What I am billed is 2GB. You use 1.5GB. The other 0.5GB disappears when the day ends. No refund. No rollover. Just gone,” he said of what he referred to as unfair behaviour to consumers.
In India’s prepaid and postpaid telecoms networks, most daily data plans reset every 24 hours, the unused data lapses automatically. All premium plans offer limited rollover options in practice; most of their users are only getting rollover benefits. Chadha’s proposal aims to create structural changes that would impact millions of people in the telecom universe as well.
The concept of data rollover would help for unused data continue to be used in the future, similar to what global markets experience. But sharing and sharing or transfer to other partners like email or text would be an optimal and flexible solution in telecoms.
Industry professionals think, implementing such measures of reform could seriously reshape the landscape of telecom companies. Such companies such as Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea will have to redesign their price structure and network infrastructure, for example.
But telecom operators may oppose it, because the daily data expiry models are still key to their revenue structures, they said. They added technical issues and how they might be abused as reasons for keeping the current system going.
As for the consumer side, Chadha’s proposal is heavily supported on social media, as users are tired of their unused data going away daily. Digital connectivity activists feel that users should control what they pay for.
It will take policy action for that demand to become reality. That could be through regulation by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). For now at least though, the controversy in our telcos has turned into an exploration of fairness, transparency and innovation in India’s industry more generally.
