From around October 21 this year, telecom operators in India, including Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea, will be required to offer a wider range of voice and SMS-only recharge plans, giving customers who don’t need mobile data more affordable options. This follows an amendment by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to its existing consumer protection regulations, notified on September 21, coming into effect 30 days after its gazette publication.
Telecom Companies Required to Offer Basic Plans
New regulations mandate that all telecom providers must offer voice-and-SMS-only plans that correspond to their existing voice-SMS-data plans. These basic plans must be available for every validity period of 30 days or less. Additionally, the plans are required to renew on the same date each month. If a renewal date does not occur in a particular month, the plan will automatically renew on the last day of that month.
TRAI also noted that when these plans were first introduced, companies did not reduce the price by much, even though data was excluded. On pricing, TRAI has given telecom companies broad guidance rather than fixed instructions. It has suggested that companies base their price cuts on the average revenue they earn per subscriber per GB of data, a figure that TRAI itself publishes from time to time. Others warned that cheaper, short-validity voice-and-SMS-only plans could be misused by telemarketers and increase spam calls.
Following complaints from consumers and consumer groups asking for shorter voice-and-SMS-only plans, TRAI released a draft amendment on April 7, 2026.
Prices were only lowered later, after “public discontent”, said TRAI in an explanatory memorandum issued by it along with the amendment. The draft proposed that telecom companies must offer such plans for every validity period that they already offer for regular voice-SMS-data bundles, with prices reduced “largely proportional” to the removal of data. Some telecom companies also said that mandating a fixed price cut would count as indirect price control, going against TRAI’s usual policy of letting companies set their own tariffs. After reviewing all the feedback, TRAI decided not to enforce a “largely proportional” price cut, since data plans can be structured differently, making a fixed formula impractical. Instead, it has told companies to offer “appropriate” price reductions.
