The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) plans to come out with guidelines to disconnect inactive mobile subscribers, says news reports.
According to TRAI, currently two hundred million pre-paid mobile connections in the country are not active and of which about 55 million have remained unused for more than six months. The regulator proposes to put guidelines in place to disconnect non-active connections and free up bulk of these numbers for reuse.
TRAI is of the view that the industry needs uniform standards for disconnection since operators use different parameters. While some operators discontinue services when customers do not use their mobile connections for 30 days, others have a 90-day deadline. In fact one of the operator even extends a six-month timeframe for terminating unused connections.
TRAI guidelines will also define what constitutes usage. Currently, some operators say that customers will have to make at least one outgoing call while other mobile phone companies disconnect customers if they don’t fail to activate recharge voucher within the prescribed timeframe.
