DoT rebuffs Congress’s claims on mobile tariff hikes as ‘misleading’
The DoT said that the Telecommunications Service Providers had raised tariffs after more than two years, during which time they had invested heavily in rolling out 5G services
New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) on Friday responded to Congress’s attack on the government over mobile tariff hikes by telecom companies, saying that the rates are determined by market forces where the government “does not intervene”.
The response came hours after Congress accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of “fleecing” 1.09 billion mobile users by allowing the three largest telcos of the country to raise tariffs without any oversight or regulation.
The three major mobile networking companies – Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea – recently announced an increase in tariff plans which came into effect from July 3 and 4. While Reliance Jio hiked the prices by an average of 20%, Vodafone hiked the tariff price by an average of 16%, and Airtel by 15%.
The ministry in a statement said that rates are regulated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The DoT also said that the Telecommunications Service Providers had raised tariffs after more than two years, during which time they had invested heavily in rolling out 5G services.
The DoT called the Congress’ claim related to the tariff hike “misleading”.
“While protecting the interests of subscribers, for orderly growth of the telecommunication sector, which includes investments in the latest technologies like 5G, 6G, IoT/M2M [internet of things/machine to machine] for Industry 4.0 etc., the financial viability of the sector is important,” the ministry of communications said in its statement.
In the press conference earlier on Friday, Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala had said that the hike would impose a financial burden of about Rs.35,000 crore on mobile users in the country.
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In response, the ministry said that over the last two decades, “the rates of mobile services has [sic] been kept under forbearance by TRAI” which has led to India having amongst the cheapest mobile services in the world.
Surjewala questioned the timing of the hikes, saying that they were done after the conclusion of the general elections so that the government was not questioned over them.
He asked how the three private companies, which control about 92 per cent of the market, could be allowed to unilaterally raise the tariffs without any oversight by the government or TRAI.
The ministry, in response, said that mobile services in India are currently being delivered by three private TSPs and one public TSP. “From the competition point of view, this is an optimal market structure for mobile services,” the statement read.
The ministry further compared the state of the telecom sector under the two terms of the National Democratic Alliance government with the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and castigated the latter.
“Before, the telecommunication sector was mired in controversies and lack of transparency and therefore, the growth of mobile services was stagnant. During the last 10 years, due to progressive policies of the government, the rates of telecommunication services be it voice or data, have fallen exponentially. The Government has been a beneficiary of a large amount of non-tax revenue from spectrum auction which has been fully transparent and efficient”, the statement read.