Jio, Airtel and Vi Suggest No Need of Voice and SMS Only Plans

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jio, airtel and vi suggest no need

Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea, and Bharti Airtel have replied to the consultation paper of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) titled, “Review of Telecom Consumers Protection Regulations (TCPR), 2012.” The major agenda of this consultation paper is to understand whether the market needs SMS and voice only validity packs. At the moment, if you want a voice only or a SMS only pack or a combination of both, you can’t get such a pack with validity. The inclusion of data in every pack by the telcos resulted in consumers having to recharge with the kind of prepaid plans they don’t want. However, it won’t be right to say that no conumer wants data on their pack. In fact, most do, and there would be select few users who wouldn’t want it.

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Reliance Jio said that in its survey, 90% of the users said that the mobile plans are affordable, and over 56% felt that bundling is good for consumers. Jio also said that even if users don’t want data on their plans, they would need it to make UPI payments. The telco even said that if the consumer needs less data for basic stuff, then there are such plans (with less data bundled) available.

“We submit there is no need to mandate voice/SMS only plans and the policy of forbearance should be persisted with. It is further submitted that even for this segment; by providing plans without data, we will lose the chance of connecting these users with digital economy,” Jio said.