Lockdown: Trai tells telcos to ensure continuous services

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked telcos to take steps to ensure users get continuous services, including extending the validity period of prepaid subscribers. "Though the telecommunication services have been considered as essential services and thus granted an exception from closing down. However, lock down may adversely affect the working of customer service centres/point of sale locations," Trai said on Sunday.

"Under the circumstances, it is quite possible that those subscribers who wish to top up their prepaid balances or wish to extend subscription to a prepaid tariff using offline channels may face hardships and/or disruption of services," it added.

The regulator also allowed a six-week extension to telecom operators to file their monthly and quarterly reports, as a part of regulatory compliance, in the wake of the national lockdown.


"Considering the pandemic, we have in-principle extended deadline to six weeks for telecom service providers to file their monthly as well as quarterly reports," Trai secretary Sunil K Gupta separately told ET.