A day after the telecom industry began raising voice tariffs, the telecom regulator said that it was closely monitoring the tariff hike and cautioned the mobile service providers to not take its policy of forbearance over tariffs for granted.
?Forbearance does not mean that we have closed our eyes. Forbearance reposes faith on operators and we realise there is competition in the market,? Trai chairman Rahul Khullar said, adding that if there is market where competition is driving tariff down then forbearance is a reasonable action.
The statement comes a day after Airtel and Idea hiked the effective voice tariffs by pulling out what they called freebies from the market and by reducing the validity of the pre-paid vouchers. Another service provider Vodafone hinted that it would soon follow suit.
Under the regulatory norm, operators have forbearance with regard to tariffs and can make changes in it without any prior approval from the regulator. However, after making changes they have to file the tariffs with the regulator within a week’s time.
As far as the telecom industry is concerned it has consistently maintained that the rock bottom tariffs were unsustainable and that tariffs would soon be hiked.
The aforementioned three telecom operators along with Reliance Communications account for more than 65% mobile phone connections in the country with 58.41 crore customers on their wireless network as of November 2012.
