Bharti Airtel has added three voice-only packs to its prepaid recharge portfolio, days ahead of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) deadline.
The company confirmed to HT that the three packs have been added and are priced at ₹185 with a validity of 28 days, ₹203 with a validity of 30 days and ₹206 with a calendar month validity, each offering unlimited local and national voice calls and 300 SMS bundled. The new plans are now listed on the Airtel app for prepaid accounts.
In September, TRAI had set a deadline for October 21, noting a 30-day period of compliance, for operators including Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vi to offer voice-only plans to customers. Airtel becomes the first to put together these packs. There have been calls from consumers that 4G and 5G data-heavy recharge options offer little value for those who use feature phones primarily for voice calls and messages.
India has approximately 220 million feature phone users. In August, CyberMedia Research noted that India’s 2G-based feature phone user base grew 5% year-on-year. Itel led the 2G segment with a 38% share, followed by Lava (30%) and HMD (20%).
Rising component costs have led to new phones becoming more expensive, which has extended phone replacement and upgrade cycles as users are holding on to existing phones for longer. By removing the data bundle from these packs, telecom service providers are expected to reduce prices for the voice-only plans.
The troika of new recharge options follows TRAI’s mandate of options with 30-day validity or lesser, keeping parity with recharge plans that include 4G or 5G data bundles. At some point, Airtel is likely to offer a voice-only plan with a longer-duration validity as well, if these plans find traction with users.