India's Regulator Demands Data Usage Transparency

India's regulator, TRAI, takes another step towards transparency and bill shock prevention, in addition to the other Net Neutrality laws (see "India Planned Net Neutrality Laws" - here).

Telecom Lead reports that the "Telecom Regularoty Authority of India today said Indian telecom service providers should share data usage related information with their subscribers on regular basis".

See "TELECOM CONSUMERS PROTECTION (EIGHTH AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS, 2015 (5 OF 2015)" - here.

"Indian telecoms such as Vodafone India, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Tata Docomo, Aircel, Uninor, MTS India, Videocon Telecom, MTNL and BSNL must issue notices in form of USSD or SMS about data usage to its customers, TRAI said in its Telecom Consumers Protection (Eighth Amendment) Regulations, 2015.

TRAI said it received several complaints from mobile Internet consumers regarding non-availability of information relating to the amount of data used during a data session .. Mobile network operators now need to send information about the usage to data users at every 10 MB of data consumption except customers opting for special schemes like add-on packs, combo offers and others. The consumers are to be provided with an option to opt out if they do not desire to receive such information.

.. Further the consumer shall be informed about the details of tariff applicable after exhausting the data limit, when the data limit reaches 90 percent or the data balance available in the account reaches 10MB .. Telecom operators also need to send an alert to international roaming customer cautioning the person to deactivate data service if one does not intend to use data services.

TRAI ordered the service providers to implement the same by November 1 this year". 

See "TRAI wants telecoms to share data usage info with subscribers" - here.

NI Deployments [354]: Telecom Italia Uses Sandvine for Customer Experience Management

Sandvine announced that Telecom Italia is a customer since 2012. TI was one of the first incumbent fixed carriers to use DPI for traffic shaping, initially with Cisco gear (see "Telecom Italia DPI Policies - Limiting only P2P Traffic" - here), This is the first time that Sandvine publicly names TI as a customer. 

 

The company declined to comment whether they had displaced Cisco 3 years ago for the traffic shaping tasks as the current announcement is about the network intelligence aspects of DPI: 

"Telecom Italia is using Sandvine solutions as a key part of its service operations center (SOC) and customer experience management (CEM) platform .. using data generated by Sandvine’s Business Intelligence and Usage Management products to generate key performance indicators (KPIs) for their fixed and mobile networks in Italy. The data is fed by Sandvine’s Record Generator directly to big data and SOC/CEM systems used by Telecom Italia’s internal operations, planning and marketing teams". 

"Ensuring a high quality web-browsing and video experience are essential for helping Telecom Italia provide the best possible service to their subscribers. Sandvine provides Telecom Italia with numerous attributes used to measure both web and video quality, so that Telecom Italia can proactively diagnose network issues and identify quality-related network trends before they impact their subscribers".

See "Sandvine Helps Telecom Italia Elevate Customer Experience Management" - here.

[ISOC 2012 Survey]: Which Factors will Increase Internet Usage?

    

The Internet Society (ISOC) published the results of its 2012 survey, based on responses from 10,000 people from 20 countries asked about "..their attitudes towards the Internet and behaviors online".

Responses to questions on Internet usage, show that "Connection speed (73 percent) and reliability (69 percent) ranked slightly above more affordable monthly fees (68 percent) among factors that would increase usage. Other factors included more content in their local language (50 percent) and more online availability of government and/or community services (49 percent)".

The chart below shows the percentage of respondents answering with "Most likely" for the speed, reliability and cost factors that will "encourage you to use the Internet more often" for US, Germany, Russia, India and Globally:

  

See "Global Internet User Survey 2012" - here and the full results (here). 

FCC Chairman: UBB is Useful; Should be Transparent and Fair

   

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (pictured) spoke recenelty at Vox Media, making a statement on usage based billing.

At the end of 2010 Mr. Genachowski said that "Our work has also demonstrated the importance of business innovation to promote network investment and efficient use of networks, including measures to match price to cost such as usage-based pricing" (see "FCC: Usage-Based Pricing is Important" - here) - this time he was more cautious.

"This explosion of online video and other high-bandwidth applications and services is leading Internet users to consume more and more data every month. To maximize the opportunities of broadband for our conomy, consumers need sufficient monthly broadband capacity to make e-commerce routine and unconstrained".

".. This presents challenges for broadband providers in managing the growing loads on their networks while earning returns to drive capital investment in network upgrades and expansion. One tool we’ve seen is usage-based pricing, often implemented with monthly data limits.I’ve said since 2010 that, in a competitive market, usage-based pricing can be a useful tool, consistent with the goals of driving efficiency, investment, and faster and more robust network infrastructure. In general, experimentation in business models in competitive markets is something to be encouraged, and has historically benefited consumers".

 
"At the same time, I’ve been clear that I’m concerned about practices that harm competition, including from over-the-top providers; unnecessarily depress broadband usage; or reduce incentives to increase broadband speeds and capacity. As I said earlier this year, as consumer usage grows and technology improvements enable providers to deliver more bits at lower cost, we should expect that any monthly usage limits will increase and that consumer cost-per-bit will decrease".

" .. And certainly, any usage-based pricing practices should be implemented in a transparent and easy-to-understand manner – so consumers are treated fairly and have the tools they need to make the right decisions based on their needs".

See "Chairman Genachowski Remarks on Broadband at Vox Media" - here.