Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in order to ensure transparency in delivery of broadband services and to protect interests of consumers in the telecom sector, today issued Direction to telecom service providers for delivering broadband services in a transparent manner by providing adequate information to the broadband consumers about various plans and Fair Usage Policy (FUP). By this directive TRAI wants broadband service provider to be more open and transparent in providing information on data tariffs to consumers.
Through this Direction, telecom service providers have also been directed to provide adequate information on Fair Usage Policy (FUP). Like many service providers are offering data plans with higher speed to a certain download limit (like 1GB to 10GB) and after the limit usually telecom operators reduce the data download speed to the minimum (like 128Kbps to 256Kbps). Service providers doesn’t usually advertise this low-speed FUP, they only say unlimited data usage at high-speed, thus misleading consumers.
TRAI has asked broadband providers to ensure that speed of broadband connection is not reduced below the minimum speed specified and to provide alert in the form of SMS, USSD etc to consumers when their data usage reaches 80% and 100% of the data usage limit bundled with the plan. Thus now we can accept broadband providers to set the minimum speed to 256 Kbp. BSNL and MTNL has already started increasing the minimum broadband speed from 256Kbps to 512Kbps for home/business users.