Telcos Hurry to Add Recharge Plans Amid Lockdown

By: Sneha Chaudhary 

• Telecom Service Providers are ready to become a power partner to prepaid mobile phone recharges.

• COAI issues instructions to state mobile recharging retailers to open their outlets for offering telecom services to the public.

• Government support required to extend benefits to prepaid users.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the suddenly extended lockdown across the nation has led the Telecom industry to increasingly seeking out new ways to enable mobile recharges. Telecom companies are requesting the state government to open retail recharge outlets to incentivizing vendors. Here, measures have been taken after the operators extended incoming validity for millions of users.

Following week, Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), representing private telcos, has written to various states. Enabling mobile recharging for the retailers and to open their outlets for offering telecom services to the public at a requisite instruction in the state/UT, COAI has lifted this issue on high priority.

This arrangement comes a few days after the country’s telecom regulatory body asked all the three telcos to support their prepaid users with free talk time and extended validity. On the fact that MHA has now clarified that mobile recharging retailers for the prepaid mobile telephone connections are included as a public utility is stressing for COAI.

Meanwhile, digital payment platforms like Paytm, Vodafone, JIO, Idea, and Airtel have announced an exclusive program ‘Recharge Saathi’ that enables the partnership to Paytm with an exclusively power for prepaid mobile phone recharges for Vodafone and Idea users.