To support governments efforts towards a cashless economy, Indian telecom watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended free monthly internet data benefits for rural mobile subscribers. Under this scheme, mobile subscribers in the rural area will get a reasonable amount of data of minimum 100 MB per month for free.
The free data scheme could be funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). This includes Universal Access Levy (UAL) which is a prescribed percentage of the charge levied on telecom operators revenue. According to various media reports, the government has more than 4 billion dollars of unused USOF funds.
TRAI also suggested that to increase participation of other entities for incentivizing free data, there is a need to introduce a third party (Aggregator). These aggregators need to facilitate schemes which are telecom service provider (TSP) agnostic and non-discriminatory in their implementation.
This post was last modified on December 20, 2016 10:56 am