India's telecom watchdog has cracked down on companies offering mobile services, asking them to remove all obstacles in case users wanted to port their numbers to a new prepaid plan with another service provider.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) passed this order following concern expressed by Jio over its competitors discouraging subscribers from porting out. Jio had raised the matter with the statutory body, alleging that both Vodafone-Idea (Vi) and Airtel had used unfair means to tie down customers.
India's three premier telecom service providers had recently hiked the costs of their prepaid plans.
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The company, a part of India's Reliance Industries, sought that the authorities must look into specific details of its rival's tariff plans. For e.g. it said that Vodafone-Idea had made it mandatory for users to join the Rs.179-plan to avail of short-messaging services, without which users cannot send out SMS to port their numbers.
The company claimed that this was a restrictive practice which resulted in customers having to fork out higher tariff just so that they can send the text message to exit a plan or shift to a new operator. Once the SMS is sent, the operators takes 4-5 days to process the porting request.
“The Authority, hereby directs all access service providers to enable, with immediate effect, for all mobile subscribers, both prepaid and postpaid, requesting for a unique porting code, the facility to send SMS on short code 1900,” TRAI has said in its order.
The complainant said Vodafone-Idea subscribers had to move from the basic Rs.149 plan to a higher one in order to send the SMS for porting. Once customers recharge their plans with a higher denomination, they may be loathe to change operators in view of the financial loss they incur in the bargain.
On its part, TRAI said it had received several complaints of subscribers being unable to send messages to 1990 for porting out despite having a sufficient balance. “This is in contravention of provisions of MNP regulation as it takes away the rights of customers to avail the Mobile Number portability facility,” it said.
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