The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed telcos to allow subscribers to be able to port out to another telecom operator irrespective of their prepaid or postpaid tariff plans.
The decision comes within days of Reliance Jio Infocomm alleging that Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel’s new tariff plans bars consumers below a certain pricing threshold from porting out.
Under the new tariff plan, Bharti Airtel and Vi did not offer SMS service on its low-end plan. This move by the two telcos is seen as an attempt to abstain lower end plan users from opting for SIM porting facility as portability requires active SMS plan on the existing SIM.
TRAI has received several complaints from subscribers that despite sufficient balance on their phones, they have been unable to send messages to port out to the short code 1900.
To this end, TRAI has directed all access service providers to enable the facility of sending SMS on short code 1900 for all mobile subscribers, both prepaid and postpaid.
