India Expands Voice and SMS Only Recharge Choices Under New Telecom Rule

India’s telecom regulator has tightened a rule intended to let mobile customers buy calls and text messages without paying for bundled data they do not use. The September 22 amendment requires operators to offer voice-and-SMS-only special tariff vouchers across more validity periods, addressing a gap left by the earlier requirement to offer at least one such option.

The change is about choice of duration as well as service. The regulator says that the limited voice-and-SMS-only vouchers available after its 2024 amendment were concentrated in longer validity periods. That can force a customer needing a short recharge to buy a data bundle or commit to a longer plan. The new framework requires a matching voice-and-SMS-only option for each combined voice, SMS and data voucher validity of 30 days or less.

It also requires a monthly-renewable option that falls on the same date each month, with a last-day-of-month rule when that date does not exist, and at least one longer-validity voice-and-SMS-only voucher corresponding to a combined plan’s validity. Operators must apply an appropriate tariff reduction for excluding data, according to the regulator’s announcement. The rule does not announce a single nationwide recharge price, so customers will still need to compare actual operator tariffs when the new choices appear.

A short-duration alternative may particularly matter to people using a basic handset, a second SIM or a connection mainly for voice calls and one-time-passcode messages. It may also give households with constrained budgets a smaller immediate recharge commitment. Those are potential uses of the additional choices, not a guarantee that every customer’s bill will fall.

The regulator had floated the proposal in April, received 1,132 stakeholder responses and held an open discussion in June before finalising it. The practical test now moves to operators’ published plan menus: consumers should be able to compare a voice-and-text-only voucher with a data-bundled voucher of the same validity and decide whether the saving is worthwhile. The existence of a mandated option and the attractiveness of its eventual price are separate questions.