The private Indian telecom operators including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) recently hiked the tariffs of prepaid and postpaid mobile plans. The tariffs moved up between 11-25% across different plans, and with that, the base plans also got more expensive. From base plans, we mean the minimum recharge plans to keep the SIM active. The Indian government has made it very clear that it won't get involved in these decisions by the private telecom operators. The tariffs fall under the purview of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), and thus, the government won't interfere with the tariff decisions of the telcos.
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When asked about the same, Minister of State for Communications and Rural Development, Dr Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, said, "In 2004, after determining the presence of adequate competition in the telecom services market, in line with many countries in the world, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) adopted the policy of forbearance for the mobile telecom services. It implies that the telecom Service Providers (TSPs) are free to fix tariff for telecommunication services in a competitive market based on the market forces of demand and supply."
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The only thing is that TRAI has mandated the telcos to report any change in tariffs within seven days of implementation. At the same time, it is worth noting that the TRAI is consulting on whether the market needs prepaid plans which only come with SMS and calling benefits (means without data) and still have service validity.
In addition, Pemmasani said that Indian telecom tariffs are amongst the lowest in the world and in India's neighbourhood also. To compare, the average cost of 1GB of data in India is less than $0.20 while in the USA (United States of America) the same costs $6 on average.
