The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday directed telecom companies to offer broadband services in a more transparent manner. Under this, telecom companies have to provide alerts, either through SMS or e-mail, to consumers when their data consumption reaches 80 per cent and 100 per cent of the usage limit bundled with a tariff plan.
Telecom companies have been asked to ensure that speed of broadband connection is not reduced below the minimum specified even if the consumer exhausts the quota under the monthly plan. For example, the consumers are offered higher speeds up to certain data download limit (5 GB or 10 GB) and once this limit is reached, the broadband speed gets reduced and in some cases it falls below 256 kilo bits per second (kbps).
“The Authority has noted that while service providers have mechanism to monitor data usage, the subscriber, while surfing the Internet does not have similar mechanism to monitor his data usage,” TRAI said.