Have you ever faced a situation where your friend receives a message with a special offer and you don’t even tough you both are on same network. Well incumbent telecom operators i.e. Airtel, Idea & Vodafone are following this mechanism to offer segmented or say differentiated offers to its users. Well this could be a thing of past if TRAI has its say.

As per the latest directive issued by TRAI, the incumbents operators cannot offer segmented offers to its users depending upon their usage pattern, location and more. Also TRAI has made it mandatory for all operator to file the plans/recharges with TRAI with 7 working days from the date of implementation of the said plans/recharge.

It all started when Reliance Jio made a written complaint against Idea, Airtel & Vodafone to TRAI that these 3 operators are offering plans that are neither listed anywhere (retention plans) nor notified to the TRAI to stop its users from moving to Reliance Jio via MNP. Reliance Jio’s offer no such segmented or differentiated plans, its plans across India are same.

Taking cognize of Reliance Jio, TRAI came in to action and announced it judgement or directive against such segmented offers. Actually it is a good move, since we talk of One India One Nation, the tariffs offered by the operators should be the same across India.

Here is the extract of the directive :

The Authority, in exercise of powers conferred upon it under section 13 read with section 11 (2) and 12(4) of TRAI Act, 1997 and the provisions of the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 and in order to protect the interests of the consumers and for the reasons mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, hereby directs all the Access Service Providers:- to ensure that all the tariffs offered to the consumers shall be in accordance with the provisions of Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 and shall not be discriminatory between the subscribers of the same class and to ensure that every tariff that is offered to a customer is invariably reported to the Authority as per reporting framework under the forbearance regime unless an express exemption has been provided in the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 (as amended from time to time).

IN case you want to read whole Directive, visit this page.