TRAI Orders Telcos Provide 30-Day Validity Plans: What Does It Mean?

Recently, TRAI, (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has issued a new order that helps prepaid users get relatively cheaper plans. The authority has made this move to address the piling concerns of users regarding the prepaid tariff plans that have only 28 days of validity or its multiples.

Notably, most prepaid plans offered by all Telecom operators offer validity periods such as 14 days, 28 days, 56 days and 84 days among others. As per TRAI's order, telecom operators have been ordered to provide 30 days of validity instead of 28 days. Here, you will get to know better what this new order means for you.

What Does New TRAI Order Mean?

If you think that this new order from TRAI will make the telcos upgrade all their prepaid plans with 28 days to provide a relatively longer validity of 30 days. However, this might not be the case. The government has asked telcos to provide at least one recharge plan, one special tariff voucher and one combo voucher with a validity of 30 days.

Furthermore, the carriers are asked to provide at least one plan voucher, one special tariff voucher, and one combo voucher that will be renewable on the same date of each month. This move will provide more clarity among users regarding the recharge. As per TRAI, users will be able to make informed decisions related to tariff plans.

Why Telcos Prefer 28 Days Validity?

If you have been wondering why telecom operators prefer offering 28 days of validity instead of 30 days, then you can get to know the answer from here. Notably, you will be surprised by the impact caused by the 28-day validity principle. While 30 days validity plans require customers to recharge 12 times a year, those plans with a validity of 28 days require users to recharge 13 times a year.

Airtel, Jio and Vi decided to provide a 30-day prepaid plan so that users will recharge 12 times in a year. The additional one month of recharge made by customers generates thousands of crores in revenue for the telecom operators.

This is the same issue that users are facing with the quarterly validity plans as well. Telcos fall short when it comes to 90-day validity plans and provide only 84 days of validity. Also, this leaves out 29 days in a year. With this new order from TRAI, users will be able to better understand the validity period and their yearly expenditure on prepaid plans.