Telecom companies will need to provide coupons at a discounted rate

Mobile service providers will have to issue separate voice calls and SMS plans for customers who do not use data. TRAI will not reconsider this order. Its validity period will not exceed 365 days. Anil Kumar Lahoti, Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said, this decision is in customers' interest.

TRAI Chairman said the limit of 90 days on special recharge coupons will be up to 365 days. The service provider will have to give at least one special tariff voucher specifically for voice i.e. talk and SMS. Lahoti said a pilot project on a digital distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform for past consents given by customers to receive commercial messages will start this month. Customers can be encouraged to use the data, but they cannot be forced to do so.

Currently, if you get a message or call from some service provider or vendor and you complain it is spam, they can say that's not so. We have customer consent. TRAI's focus, said Lahoti, is not just to protect the interests of the industry but also to protect the interests of customers, who have the right to pay for only those services that they need.

The reform will be executed by an agency appointed by the regulator, and it will be completed this year. The second thing that we will be working on is Digital consent acquisition, said Lahoti. The problem is to take those consents onto the DLT because you cannot just abandon them completely. IT reforms are also going to be kicked off by the regulator.