The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has extended the timeline to submit counter comments on its draft ‘Telecommunication Tariff’ order that proposed to eliminate tariffs for unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) based mobile banking and payment services to boost digital financial inclusion.
The regulator has sought counter-comments by December 17, 2021. This move by TRAI is in response to the requests from stakeholders.
Earlier, it had only sought stakeholder comments by December 8, 2021 on the new draft regulation.
As per industry sources, in their initial submissions, private telecom operators have urged the sector regulator to go for a graded reduction in tariffs for unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) based mobile banking and payment services, arguing that any regulation to make such services free overnight would increase financial stress in the telecom sector.
In addition, the telcos have also urged that the cost of providing such services should ideally be borne by banks and not telecom service providers, since USSD based mobile banking is provided by banks.
