You could be paying up to 150 times more than what an SMS —short message service — actually costs to the private telecom companies. A PIl in the Supreme Court has claimed that telecom operators have been charging up to Rs 1.50 for an SMS that costs them just one paisa.
The Government at Centre has not bothered to address this concern while the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is yet to put telcos to notice on this arbitrary charge.
However, the Supreme Court on Monday admitted the PIl by NGO Telecom Watchdog and sought the response from the Centre and TRAI within four weeks.
The figures in the PIl suggest that cost-based tariff for local and national SMS cannot exceed more than one paisa per message. In contrast, major players Vodafone and Airtel have been charging anything between 1.22 paise to 10 paise in the pre-paid scheme. This figures rose exponentially to Rs 1 per local SMS and Rs 1.50 per national SMS.
The SMS rates of Vodafone in the three major metropolitans of Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai suggest an arbitrary method of pricing, the PIl filed by advocate Prashant Bhushan stated. For instance, under a plan of Rs 35 per month, Vodafone charges 10 paise per SMS in Delhi. Under a similar package of Rs 38 offered by the same company in Chennai, per SMS charge is 1.27 paise.
Airtel, which offers a Rs 81-package, charged 7.36 paise per SMS in Kolkata while Vodafone costs 7.27 paise per SMS under similar package in the same city. The PIl has questioned this double standard of the operators for different cities when the spectrum usage charge in the entire country is common. The issue becomes more serious on noting the corresponding rates charged by BSNl in Chennai which ranges from as low as 0.93 paise to 1.20 paise across all plans.
According to a TRAI consultation paper prepared in April 27, 2011, cost-based charges for SMS are negligible, almost 1/144 times that of terminating a voice call. The inaction of the TRAI to act against the operators violating its own rule is strange, if not surprising, noted the petition. To add to the consumer’s woes, some operators are seeking to levy termination charge of 10 paise per SMS. Doing this would shoot up the base tariff of SMS by many folds, it added.