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    Trai gives Vodafone Idea till September 8 to respond to show cause notice on RedX

    Synopsis

    Trai had on August 25 issued a show cause notice to VIL, asking why it shouldn’t ban the telco’s RedX plan that the sector regulator said appeared to be making false claims about offering faster data speeds and misleading consumers.

    Vodafone IdeaAgencies
    VIL, which introduced the plan last November, has much to lose if RedX is barred as it already has almost 130,000 users, who may switch to rivals, say experts. The telco though is expected to fight legally any ban on its plan.
    The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has further extended the deadline till September 8 for Vodafone Idea to respond to its show cause notice on the telco’s RedX premium tariff plan.

    It had earlier allowed the telco to respond by September 4 instead of the original August 31 deadline.

    Trai had on August 25 issued a show cause notice to VIL, asking why it shouldn’t ban the telco’s RedX plan that the sector regulator said appeared to be making false claims about offering faster data speeds and misleading consumers.

    “VIL has now been allowed to respond by September 8 after the company sought an extension of 15 days from the date of issue of our show cause notice,” a senior Trai official told ET.

    At press time, VIL did not reply to ET’s query.

    In the show cause notice, Trai had told VIL that its claim of offering faster data speeds to RedX users appeared bogus as the telco had been unable to prove that it is actually possible to offer the promised faster data speeds to RedX consumers. It had also pointed out that VIL had been non-transparent in its communications to customers about its inability to actually guarantee faster data speeds on the RedX premium tariff plan.

    VIL, which introduced the plan last November, has much to lose if RedX is barred as it already has almost 130,000 users, who may switch to rivals, say experts. The telco though is expected to fight legally any ban on its plan.

    Earlier, the sector regulator had sought more time from the Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) to conclude its ongoing inquiry into whether VIL’s RedX and Airtel’s Platinum tariffs degraded the quality of services of their users on other non-premium offers.

    However, Trai did not show cause Bharti Airtel last month after the Sunil Mittal-led telco modified its Platinum tariff plan by taking out both the faster data speeds and priority network elements from the offer, and filed a revised plan with the regulator.


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