Prepaid validity till May 3: Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea have extended the validity of prepaid service users till May 3.

Telecom operator Reliance Jio has extended the validity keeping in mind the hardships of thousands of low-income users. “This will not only benefit low-income users but also benefit everyone who is unable to do a recharge during these challenging times,” Reliance Jio said in a statement.

Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), has announced the extension of incoming services for low-income feature phone prepaid users till 3rd May when the nationwide lockdown to prevent COVID-19 spread will end. Bharti Airtel announced a similar initiative to allow low-income customers to receive incoming calls on their Airtel mobile numbers even after the validity of their plan is exhausted till 3 May.

Jio has also launched a JioPOS Lite app to incentivize subscribers to recharge for others and earn commission from it.

On 20 April, Avneesh Khosla, Marketing Director, Vodafone Idea said, “In order to ensure that consumers stay connected during this extended lockdown, we are extending the incoming service validity of 90 mn consumers till May 3rd. This would effectively mean that these consumers can use their phones for receiving incoming calls unhindered.”

Trai had sent similar letters on April 7 to the telcos Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea and MTNL to accelerate the corrective measures in order to ensure uninterrupted services to all prepaid users during the lockdown and sought an immediate compliance report from the telcos.

BSNL
BSNL also extended incoming calls validity for all its subscribers whose prepaid packs have expired during the lockdown and are having almost zero balance. The state-owned operator has extended the validity to May 5.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases in India has risen to 17,265 after 1,553 fresh infections were reported in the past 24 hours. The death toll has gone up to 543. In India, over 4 lakh samples have been tested so far.

At least 2,546 people have recovered from the infection. And at present, there are 14,175 active coronavirus patients in the country.