TRAI blocks Vodafone Idea's RedX and Airtel's Platinum premium plans

[hike]

The telecom regulator has blocked Bharti Airtel’s Platinum and Vodafone Idea’s RedX premium plans that offer faster data speeds and priority services, saying such schemes could lower the quality of mobile services for those who haven’t opted for them.

Trai blocks Airtel, Vodafone Idea premium plans, says may affect service quality of others - ET Telecom

I was shocked to see it's advt yesterday evening but that's right decision! 4G is 4G their shouldn't be any difference according to plan.

 

[hike]

Airtel is doing this from last 2/3 years silently, while I was in Mumbai we were 4 people living, two had Postpaid connection and on Speedtest they used to get 15-20 Mbps speeds and I and my other roomate used to get speeds of less than 5 Mbps sitting in the same room, they have been doing this from long, it got highlighted just now.

Devices can be the reason at my house Mi phone with Jio connection don't give speed where as Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme works very great.

 

[Ashok Varma]

If AVOID wants premium paid users, then they should shutdown 2G and stop services for Rs.200 below paid users.

 

[Esmail]

That comparison doesn't seem right. We pay for Speed+Data on Wired broadband and we get exactly what we pay for. But on wireless, nowhere do the operators mention speed that's guaranteed to the users, whatever maybe the tier of the plan, only data. If they do want to implement this, they should provide a guaranteed speed for all the tiers. For instance, for prepaid or lower tier plans, let them provide 5 Mbps all the time regardless of where we are located and for higher tier they can provide 20 Mbps if they want to. However, if they are throttling a lower tier user's speed to serve better speed to a higher tier user, that's unfair, which is why TRAI intervened imo.

No wireless operator can guarantee a minimum speed at any time of the day in any location, since the speed depends on a lot of factors like whether you are indoors or outdoors, whether your phone supports carrier aggregation or not, whether that tower that you are connected to has the higher frequency band with large bandwidth or not, how many users are simultaneously connected to a tower at that point of time and whether or not they are running bandwidth heavy activities like video streaming.
But the wireless operator can set up a bandwidth regulation mechanism whereby it can allocate 60% of the bandwidth to premium users and reserve 40% of bandwidth for the normal subscribers and based on this allocation it can calculate the maximum achievable speed in an ideal setup for both the premium and regular tiers and advertise accordingly, that our premium plans offer speeds up to 30 Mbps while our regular plans offer speeds up up 20 Mbps, so if you desire up to 50% higher speeds switch to our premium plans.
And when u say up to, you will never get the ideal speed, like when 3G came it used to be advertised as up to 7.2 Mbps for HSDPA and up to 21 Mbps for HSPA+ but you would be lucky to get speeds of 3 Mbps in HSDPA and 12 Mbps in HSPA+.

 

[Siva]

No wireless operator can guarantee a minimum speed at any time of the day in any location, since the speed depends on a lot of factors like whether you are indoors or outdoors, whether your phone supports carrier aggregation or not, whether that tower that you are connected to has the higher frequency band with large bandwidth or not, how many users are simultaneously connected to a tower at that point of time and whether or not they are running bandwidth heavy activities like video streaming.
But the wireless operator can set up a bandwidth regulation mechanism whereby it can allocate 60% of the bandwidth to premium users and reserve 40% of bandwidth for the normal subscribers and based on this allocation it can calculate the maximum achievable speed in an ideal setup for both the premium and regular tiers and advertise accordingly, that our premium plans offer speeds up to 30 Mbps while our regular plans offer speeds up up 20 Mbps, so if you desire up to 50% higher speeds switch to our premium plans.
And when u say up to, you will never get the ideal speed, like when 3G came it used to be advertised as up to 7.2 Mbps for HSDPA and up to 21 Mbps for HSPA+ but you would be lucky to get speeds of 3 Mbps in HSDPA and 12 Mbps in HSPA+.

That's exactly what I'm saying. They should say that upfront that in the lower tier plans, you will get this speed (Even if it's up to). But that is not there right now. It's all in the Silos. They just say that Premium plans get better speeds, but at what cost? At the cost of throttling the lower-tier plan users? If yes, define that. As long as they define that as wired broadband does, it should be fine. But they can't do it without saying the specifics.

 

[Ashok Varma]

TDSAT rejects stay on TRAI order on blocking of Vodafone RedX plans
No relief for Vodafone Idea: TDSAT refuses to stay July 11 Trai order blocking RedX - ET Telecom

 

[iDJ]

TDSAT rejects stay on TRAI order on blocking of Vodafone RedX plans
No relief for Vodafone Idea: TDSAT refuses to stay July 11 Trai order blocking RedX - ET Telecom

Good. Finally someone cares about all customers.

 

[Jagadeesh]

That's exactly what I'm saying. They should say that upfront that in the lower tier plans, you will get this speed (Even if it's up to). But that is not there right now. It's all in the Silos. They just say that Premium plans get better speeds, but at what cost? At the cost of throttling the lower-tier plan users? If yes, define that. As long as they define that as wired broadband does, it should be fine. But they can't do it without saying the specifics.

What will happen If Vodafone and Airtel announce a new service like 4G titled "4GX" and offer it only with platinum plans or redx plans. Can TRAI block that..?

 

[venky]

What will happen If Vodafone and Airtel announce a new service like 4G titled "4GX" and offer it only with platinum plans or redx plans. Can TRAI block that..?

That may backfire them since infra is the same unless they invest heavily. QoS can't be maintained.

 

[Msingh]

What will happen If Vodafone and Airtel announce a new service like 4G titled "4GX" and offer it only with platinum plans or redx plans. Can TRAI block that..?

That will come also under same type of scrutiny, they can't do that unless they are planning to launch 5G exclusively.