A lot has been happening in the telecom industry since the last month. Much recently, Jio announced its new prepaid plans that come with the kind of validity structure a lot of customers are looking for. If you are wondering if this is how all the future prepaid plans from the operators will look like, hold that thought right there.
Even though Jio announced new prepaid plans with a favourable validity structure, the telco doesn’t want to remove the 28, 56, and 84 days plans from the market. Jio has already made the request for the same with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
All of the above might sound a little confusing to some of you in regards to how does this hint at the future of the prepaid plans.
TRAI Might Listen to Reliance Jio’s Request
It might be entirely possible that Reliance Jio’s request may go down well with the sector regulator. TRAI might not interfere with the prepaid plans that come with kind of validities for now. There is a good reason behind this.
Reliance Jio requested TRAI not to interfere with the prepaid plans and their validities because that would hurt the mobile tariff structures. It would completely shake the offerings of the telcos, and that might result in catastrophic pricing of the plans at the end of the day. This would agitate users instead of helping them.
Jio instead asked the sector regulator to go ahead and ask each operator to offer at least one prepaid plan with the said validities - 30/60/90 days. This would allow the users to pick plans depending on their needs.
Reliance Jio has come out with new plans to address the needs of the users who want prepaid plans with 30/60/90 days validity. But the telco doesn’t want to change all of its prepaid plans to the same validity structure because that would result in a very big change in the tariff structures of the plans.
Thus, the future of prepaid plans might be the same as it is right now. At least with the 4G plans, the telcos might introduce new plans with the preferred validities of the customers, but it is highly unlikely that they will go ahead and change the current tariff structure and the benefits of the plan.