60m phone users to get free recharge

India Vodafone Idea announced earlier last week special COVID-19 relief offers for its 60 million low-income customers to help them stay connected at all times during the country’s brutal second wave of the pandemic.

As a special relief offer, Vi is giving $0.67 prepaid plan free to over 60 million low income customers due to the current situation. The plan offers talk time of $0.52 and 100 MB data with a validity of 28 days.

With this, Vi notes that with this provision, it is hopeful of enabling its customers to stay connected safely, and have access to all necessary information in these challenging times.

“As a special gesture, with this one-time offer, VIL will be extending benefits worth up to $40.318 million to the low-income group users in the country,” the telco said in statement, adding that it will benefit 60 million low-income users.

In financial year 2020, Indian smartphone penetration rates reached 42 percent and is estimated to reach 51 percent in financial year 2025, according to Statista. “It had more than doubled from financial year 2016, when only 24 percent of the mobile subscribers were using smartphone,” it added.

Statista also noted that “In 2020, the volume of smartphone shipments across India was around 149.7 million. And the most popular brand at the end of 2020 was Xiaomi.”

In addition, Vi has also launched a new Combo Voucher RC79 offering huge benefits to a large base of the population. This special recharge comes with the benefit of Double Talktime of $1.76 (64+64) and 200 MB of data for a validity of 28 days for a limited time.

The move comes after telecom companies Airtel and Jio also announced COVID relief plans for users. Jio has promised to provide 300 free minutes of outgoing calls per month to Jio Phone users who have not been able to recharge their Jio plans due to the ongoing pandemic.

The initiative announced in association with Reliance Foundation will offer 10 minutes per day to the above-mentioned Jio users for the entire period of the pandemic.

As such Jio has announced a free recharge plan for every Jio Phone plan recharged by a user with the additional recharge plan being of the same value as the plan paid for by the Jio Phone user. According to Inside Telecom.

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