The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stuck to its recommendation of allowing free data to consumers in a non-discriminatory manner by third-party aggregators while agreeing with the telecom department’s views that government money can be used for connectivity rather than supporting free data scheme to rural subscribers.
The regulator noted that data had become affordable due to a tariff war in the telecom sector, and that “concern with regard to availability of affordable data services has been mitigated.”
“The authority tends to agree with the views of DoT (Department of Telecom) that a larger focus is required on connectivity, content availability in local language and digital literacy. The resources could therefore be effectively utilised to address the said issues,” TRAI said responding to the telecom department’s views on its free data recommendations.
In December last year, Trai had recommended that a “reasonable” amount of free data access — say a 100 MB per month — be provided to rural subscribers and the scheme could be funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
However, the DoT subsequently pointed out that cost of an Internet enabled mobile handset was a bigger “obstacle” than the tariff of Internet access, and that the latter had already been addressed to an extent through market competition.
DoT questioned whether it would be worthwhile to provide a subsidy to those rural subscribers who already owned smartphones. It opined that the applicability of the proposed scheme was “limited”, thus undermining its tenability.
