Sir/Madam,

I’ve had the opportunity to see parts of TRAI consultation paper, and I must express my reservations.

Telecom providers are in the business of providing infrastructure (voice/data) the same way a gas company supplies piped cooking gas in my home.

Whether that gas is used to make veg or non-veg, Indian or Continental, none of that is the gas company’s business. In a very similar way, whether the data being consumed by a consumer is for Facebook, Whatsapp or Google, is outside the scope of the telecom service. They should not be allowed to sniff into packets of data to decide what to charge the consumer, what to allow or what to block.

Finally, It is no secret that thousands of customers in India have suffered at the hands of telcos (I’ve myself claimed refund from Airtel a few times they’ve overcharged me for data I did not use). There’s no reason to let them complicate billing plans on the basis of usage data that is opaque to the consumer - against which consumer will have no respite whenever companies cunningly extract more from unwitting consumers.