NEW DELHI: The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) has given some relief to incumbent telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Idea on Tuesday, issuing an interim stay on two major points of contention in the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) new predatory pricing norms.TDSAT has issued an interim stay order on new requirements which would have seen telecom firms report ‘segmented offers’ and TRAI’s new definition of significant market power (SMP). Segmented offers refer to plans that operators dish out to individual customers in an effort to retain them or counter the promotion effort of rivals. “...the clauses in the impugned order related to the reporting requirements and definition of SMP are stayed,” TDSAT said.
TDSAT, however, has qualified its stay on reporting segmented offers, saying TRAI will be entitled to ask for details of segmented discounts or concessions “for analysis” but that “no penalty shall be imposed on that basis” till further orders are given in the ongoing appeals by Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular.
Both Airtel and Idea had approached TDSAT after TRAI’s new predatory pricing policy came out, flagging the revised definition of SMP that now excluded parameters like traffic volume and switching capacity, and had argued that such changes placed them at a disadvantage. The regulator had also said that operators will have to provide services to all subscribers availing the same tariff plan in a non-discriminatory manner.
In its Tuesday order, TDSAT noted that “the appellants have expressed deep apprehension that if the reporting requires disclosure of names of their customers, or other sensitive commercial information, disclosure of the same may adversely impact their business interests and the rival service providers may gain if they have access to such information.”