Goodbye forbearance: COAI asks Trai to fix floor price for data

Despite the three telecom operators having just announced tariff hikes ranging between 15-50%, industry association Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Tuesday wrote to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to set a floor price for data services. It has said that its members, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Reliance Jio, are in agreement with this demand.

Current data rates in the country are, perhaps, the lowest in the world at Rs 7.77 per GB per month. Approximately, a consumer uses 10 GB data per month. Prior to September 2016 (before the launch of Reliance Jio) data rates were roughly Rs 50 per GB and consumption was 153 MB per month per consumer.