Will the plan's validity increase by 3 May TRAI wrote letters to all telecom companies

Will the plan's validity increase by 3 May TRAI told full plan and wrote letters to all telecom companies

TRAI wants telecom companies to increase the validity of their prepaid plans by 3 May. By doing this, there will be a lot of relief for those users who are not able to go to the recharge shop due to lockdown.

TRAI wrote a letter on Tuesday

• The regulator wrote letters to Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea, BSNL and MTNL on Tuesday. In this, they have been asked to give detailed information about prepaid users, whose validity expired during the initial lockdown of 21 days and they had not recharged themselves till the night of 13 April. In a letter to the five telecom companies, TRAI has also sought information on the actual number of prepaid users who were given a talk time credit of Rs 10 to continue their services during the lockdown. The regulator has also asked all the telecom companies what percentage of users they have provided to these users as against their total user base number on 24 March.

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• Vodafone Idea had earlier announced to extend the validity and give talk time of Rs 10 to prepaid customers of low income by 17 April. Bharti Airtel had also announced to retain validity and provide talk time of Rs 10 to its eight crore needy prepaid customers till 17 April. Reliance Jio gave 100 minutes of free talk time and 100 free SMS to its 'Jio Phone' customers. Also, their validity was extended to 17 April.

The telecom industry, however, rejected TRAI's suggestion to increase the validity of all prepaid customers and provide talk time of Rs 10. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) says that telecom companies have given a profit of Rs 600 crore to keep low-income people mingling during the public ban. It is not a matter of companies to give such benefits to all prepaid customers. For this, the government can give subsidy.