Recently TRAI released its recommendations for providing “Free Data” to consumers. The purpose of this recommendation is to enable “Free Data” to consumers without the TSPs acting as gatekeepers. While recommending for “Free Data”, TRAI has suggested that a TSP agnostic aggregator can be allowed to offer “Free Data”. As per TRAI, this aggregator should not have any direct arrangements with the TSPs, as any such relationships will violate its Feb 8th order.
One can note that the aggregator model proposed by TRAI is totally dependent on the operators offering “Pre-Paid” data packs, as “Post-Paid” model will need the aggregator to have a direct billing and traffic management tie-up with the TSPs and hence will be disallowed as per its own order of Feb 8th. In its recommendation, TRAI itself has noted this fact and therefore rejected the “Toll-Free” model which it had initially proposed as one of the alternatives. But, the aggregator model for “Pre-Paid” data packs is in practice even now in form of data packs sold by the TSPs to third parties, who in turn sell it to the consumers, for example, Oxygen.
