But clearly, the defining innovation of this latest guideline for every subscriber is a breakdown of the financial implications under various slabs of usage — say, 100 minutes, 200, 300 or 400 minutes. The breakdown will ensure that subscribers get an approximate idea of their monthly mobile phone bills, rather than be taken by surprise every time the bill lands in the mail-box.

Besides, as a part of this latest directive, TRAI has also said that all service providers have to provide entire details of tariff plans (in a specified format) along with the assumptions/methodology used in deriving the financial implications for different slabs of minutes of usage in their Web site.

According to discussions, which are currently on among the different stakeholders, TRAI is proposing to place a cap of five plans each per service provider for post-paid and pre-paid plans. And it hopes that it will not create hurdles in the way of competition. There is no doubt that too many plans are confusing the consumer and that as many as 3,925 tariff plans were reported to the regulator in 2003. It has also claimed that Reliance Infocomm and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) have used a limited number of plans to make deep inroads in the mobile market.

But in our view, placing a cap is not an appropriate solution and the example of Reliance/BSNL is hardly representative of the rest of the mobile industry. Clearly, as late entrants into the mobile market, Reliance and BSNL had no choice but to address the mass market with lower tariffs. Going forward, as the mobile market matures, there is a dire need for greater innovation and differentiation in strategies of all the operators (including Reliance and BSNL) in metros and different circles (Circle A, B and C). Obviously, flexibility in tariff plans will remain the principal instrument for addressing this problem and enhancing the mobile subscriber base. Slowly, but surely, differentiation in tariff packages in terms of bundling of handsets with low tariff offers, schemes tailored to the requirement of specific high-value users, service plans with value-added freebies are just beginning to be offered to the consumers.

For that matter, TRAI is also designing software, along with The Energy Research Institute (TERI), which will help subscribers to choose the most suitable tariff plan from a plethora of tariff plans available currently.

This, along with guidance from TRAI and other consumer organisations on how comparison shopping can be done for different tariffs and services, will go a long way in addressing this problem.

maverick@thehindu.co.in

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