The war between Reliance Jio and Airtel is ever increasing; after Airtel warned the government regarding Jio’s offer, it is Reliance’s turn to take a revenge.
Yes, now Reliance Jio has asked TRAI, the telecom regulator to impose “Highest penalty” on Bharti Airtel for misleading ads. It has accused Airtel of exaggerating the promotional offers, which mislead the customers.
A letter has been sent to TRAI on 19th of January alleging that Airtel’s ads for pre-paid and post-paid packs with regards to free data or unlimited data is “Violating the telecommunication laws”.
Further, Jio has also alleged that Airtel termed its offer to be “Unlimited” without mentioning the Fair Usage Policy. It explained in detail; well, Airtel had claimed that it is offering unlimited calling at Rs 345, but it failed to mention that it had implemented a Fair Usage Policy of 300 minutes per day or 1,200 minutes per day, crossing which, users will be charged for the calls at Rs 0.30 per minute. So if we go by this, how can we say that the calls are unlimited?
Jio claimed
“Therefore, these prepaid packs do not provide unlimited free calling to customers. This fact is not discernable from the advertisements of Airtel and neither does Airtel specify in the advertisements that such limitations apply or are conceived as part of the terms and conditions.”
These were against the instructions of TRAI, dated 10th of September 2010. Talking about the free data for 12 months worth Rs 9000, Jio raised objections that it was not “Free” data, but could be availed only after recharging with Rs 345.
It further alleged “Further, post expiry of the data benefits in the pack, the subscriber is charged at pay-as-you-go rates, therefore, the free data claims are grossly misleading.”
Continuing the arguments Jio said
“As per Airtel’s price indexation itself, the 3GB data with a validity of 28 days would be priced at Rs 450. The price of using such a pack over 12 months would then be Rs 5,400.”
How is Airtel making claims of offering benefits up to Rs 9,000?
This was not it; Jio accused Airtel of doing “Arbitrary discrimination”, which means restricting the “Free data for 12 months” offer just for subscribers with new 4G handsets, which weren’t used previously on the Airtel network. Jio claimed that this “Arbitrary classification” violates the 1999 Section IV (Transparency and Consumer Protection) Telecom order.
These allegations made by Jio are valid, isn’t it? Let’s see what action TRAI takes!
