Telcos Not Giving Talktime, Validity to All Prepaid Users: Report

The telecom body has asked all the telcos to help prepaid users with added benefits during the lockdown.

A few days back, the telecom regulatory body in the country had asked Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio to offer free talk time and extend the validity period for mobile users who were unable to recharge data on their phones.

But according to a new report from ET Telecom, the telcos are being selective in the numbers that are getting the benefits. The report claims many 2G mobile users have complained about not getting any extension to their validity, depriving them of being connected to their network in such a situation.

This has been mentioned in scathing individual letters from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to all three telcos in the country, asking them to offer these benefits to all of their prepaid users, instead of a select few, as recharge facilities remain unavailable during the lockdown.

"Airtel and VIL had followed a selective approach,” in giving relaxation to subscribers in extending the validity and giving credit of Rs 10 to each subscriber, and as a result “all the 2G subscribers were not covered and are facing hardships,” as mentioned in the TRAI letter quoted in the report.

In addition to this, TRAI is claimed to have accused Jio of giving free voice calling benefits to those who have expired validity, and not taking care of those who still have validity but have run out of balance on their number.

“The relief of crediting 100 minutes of calls and text messages is being made only to those subscribers whose validity has expired, while those who have reached a zero balance but have not yet reached the validity expiry,” the regulatory body said in its letter quoted in the report.

You must be wondering what’s the point of extending validity when recharge facility is available through online platforms? But it’s worth noting that millions of mobile users, especially those without access to the internet rely on offline shops to recharge data and talk-time balance on their phones.

And more importantly, India caters to more than 300 million users with feature phones, who cannot access the internet, leaving them at the behest of telcos, who reportedly are not able to fulfill their promises.