Amendment to the Telecom Consumers Protection Regulations

TRAI has by its Notification dated September 30, 2020 issued the Telecom Consumers Protection (Eleventh Amendment) Regulations, 2020 in relation to prevention of unintentional usage of international mobile roaming (‘IMR’) service by the customers and the consequent levy of charges. The key features of the amendment include: (a) every service provider (‘SP’) is required to ensure that IMR service is inactive by default for all consumers and it will be activated/ deactivated only at the request of a consumer; (b) every SP, upon activation of IMR service, is required to immediately provide the consumer through SMS, email and mobile application (‘Channels’) information about the activation of the IMR service and the applicable tariff (if any) for such activation; and (c) every SP through the Channels, is required to provide an alert to the consumer at different stages of exhaustion of the data usage.