TRAI to Telcos : Don’t Reduce Broadband Speed below 256 Kbps in Any Tariff Plan After FUP

In order to further improve transparency in Broadband services, India’s telecom watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today issued a Direction to all Telecom / Broadband service providers on for delivering Broadband services in a transparent manner by providing adequate information to broadband consumers specially on Fair Usage Policy (FUP) with Unlimited Plans.

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TRAI also clarified that Broadband speed should not be reduced or slashed below 256 kbps in any tariff Plan with FUP offered as “Broadband” by service providers.

TRAI said that all Broadband service providers must provide adequate information on Fair Usage Policy (FUP); to ensure that speed of broadband connection is not reduced below the minimum speed specified and to provide alert to consumers when their data usage reaches 80% and 100% of the data usage limit bundled with the plan.

TRAI  said that many consumer complaints that under Unlimited broadband plans with Fair Usage Policy (FUP), being offered by the Service providers, the consumers are offered higher speed upto a certain data download limit (e.g. 5 GB or 10 GB) and once this limit is reached, the broadband speed gets reduced to a lower level and in some cases it falls below 256 Kbps.

TRAI’s Directive to Telecom/Broadband Service Providers :

• Broadband Service Provider on their website and also in all advertisements published through any media, the following information in respect of all broadband tariff plans offered under Fair Usage Policy: – (i) data usage limit with higher speed; (ii) speed of connection upto data usage limit; and (iii) speed of connection beyond data usage limit.
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All aove information must be specified in printed form to the new subscribers on their enrolment and to existing subscribers through email on their registered email address and through SMS on their mobile numbers registered with the service providers.
Ensure that speed of broadband connection is not reduced, in all broadband tariff plans, below the minimum speed of 256 Kbps as specified in Quality of Service of Broadband Service Regulations 2006.
Provide alert to the customer at the time of login to the network of the service provider when his data usage reaches eighty percent of the data usage limit bundled with the plan and to ensure that such 4 alert shall be provided at each login after data usage crosses the said limit of eighty percent.
Send alert to the customer either through SMS on his mobile number registered with the service provider or to his registered email, each time when the data usage by the customer reaches eighty percent and hundred percent of the data usage limit bundled with plan opted by the customer, or through Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) at each login by the customer after the data usage reaches eighty percent of the data usage limit bundled with his plan.

Do let us know if you like or dislike this new directives by TRAI , will this help the Broadband customers in better transparency ? Do share your views via comments.