TRAI holds meeting with telecom firms over unsolicited calls; shares mixed

Telecom stocks are in the spotlight during Monday’s session as the regulator has called for a meeting with service providers today to discuss ways to curb the menace of unsolicited/ pesky calls. 

Shares of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi), and Jio’s parent company Reliance Industries were a mixed bag today.  

Reliance Jio’s parent company’s shares were in the green with over 1 per cent gains, followed by Sunil Mittal-led Airtel stock was trading near flatline with marginal gains, while cash-strapped Vodafone Idea shares were in the red with over 2 per cent fall on the BSE intraday today.  

Among other telecom stocks such as Indus Tower, Railtel, Rout Mobiles were among the gainers, while OnMobile, GTL Infra, MTNL, HFCl among others were under pressure on BSE Telecommunication index in a volatile market today.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is scheduled to meet telecom companies on March 27, 2023, on the development and implementation of Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) detect solutions, as the regulator continues its offensive against pesky marketing calls and messages. 

The telecom regulator further said that the exploitation of the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) platform to bring all access providers (telcos) together with respect to UCC detect solutions will be a positive step in this direction. 

Unsolicited Commercial Communication is a major source of inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals, the regulator noted. 

To curb the menace, TRAI issued the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR) on July 19, 2018, which put in place a framework for controlling pesky, unsolicited marketing calls and messages. It came into force with effect from February 28, 2019. 

Tariff War 

With largely spreading its ambit of 5G connections, the telecom majors like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are in a stiff fight over tariffs.  

Jio’s renewed aggression in postpaid and Bharti matching rival’s unlimited data offering on 5G raises the competitive intensity to attract premium subscribers, Aditya Bansal, an analyst at brokerage firm Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report on the sector. 

A delayed tariff hike while negative for the sector, however, would hurt Vi’s survival hopes the most, and could effectively lead to a duopoly, likely resulting in accelerated market share gains for Airtel and Jio, the analyst further noted in its report. 

The brokerage maintained a ‘buy’ rating on Reliance Industries with a target price of Rs 2,900 per share and gives an ‘add’ rating on Airtel with a target of Rs 830, while it retained a ‘reduced’ stance on Vodafone Idea.  

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