The Hindu : Business : Phone companies told to simplify tariff displays

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Business

Business

Phone companies told to simplify tariff displays

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 24. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued fresh directives to phone companies in order to make advertising of call rates more people-friendly. Today's order changes the specified format for phone companies to display the tariff rates.

According to the TRAI, earlier guidelines to telecom service providers about the manner of advertising their tariffs in the media have been `simplified' following feedback received from some stakeholders.

"This directive provides for a simplified format which gives the financial implication of various slabs of usage that would enable consumers in making an informed choice in the matter of tariff plans. Further, the service providers have also been directed to provide the entire details of tariff plans and the assumptions/methodology used in deriving the financial implications for different slabs of minutes of usage in their website. With this, the service providers are also required to ensure that all information of tariff changes are available in their website," said a TRAI statement.

Essentially, phone companies will have to specify the following aspects in the first format: initial one time payments including security deposit; monthly mandatory charges for post-paid package and talk time available (in rupees) for prepaid package; local/STD charges (per minute) for call to cell, WLL and fixed phones and the approximate financial implications for every 100 minutes of calling. The second format must state the methodology used in deriving financial implications.

For post paid monthly fixed charges, monthly rental and monthly plan fee (if any), monthly minimum commitment charge (if any), caller line identification charges, the interest on security deposit, monthly variable charges and the number of chargeable minutes excluding free minutes multiplied by applicable call charges.

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