The concern of MVAS service providers in recent month is falling MVAS adoption by subscribers due to regulatory enforcement of Consent Gateway. In TRAI released report, the MVAS activation fell from 69 million in June 2013 to 27.65 million in August 2013 end. It represent 40% fall in MVAS activation and service providers are blaming squarely on Consent Gateway regulatory enforcement.
TRAI released report does not indicate any deactivation initiated by subscriber by calling service providers customer care number or network agnostic TollFree number of 155223 for MVAS activation/deactivation
Indian print media on multiple occasions highlighted the unwarranted MVAS billing challenges faced by users especially rural based. It is also interesting to know that most of the common subscribers are not aware of deactivation TollFree number and faces many hurdles in getting their MVAS centric concerns registered with their serving wireless service providers.
TRAI should also release user initiated MVAS deactivation request to highlight the un-highlighted concerns of subscribers. The drastic fall in monthly MVAS activation is nothing but validation that everything is not fine with MVAS service delivery and Billing. TRAI should also come out with another amendment on MVAS in which the ecosystem players must allocate part of total generated MVAS towards the awareness of mobility subscriber.
It is widely expected that TRAI tentative next move may act as trigger for the consolidation in Indian MVAS ecosystem as well as differentiator for many mobile operators.
