What happens after service expiry? (2024)

What happens to the Airtel Prepaid number after service expiry?
Will there be any additional time by which i can get the number?

They will given one week additional for incoming once your recharge expires, than everything will be barred until you recharge your number. In how many days they will discontinue the number is not known, you are in safe zone till 3 months if u don't recharge.

Thats similar to BSNL. I was not aware of it. I thought that there would be disconnection right from the first day after the 1 week period.

Whatever @opomiyulen has written is accurate. Airtel doesn’t follow after BSNL. They simply debarr your number as soon as your pack expires. After one week, Incoming also stops. Number gets deactivated anytime after 90 days minimum.

@pillaicha Then what happens to the balance? Because according to TRAI regulation, no operator has to deactivate a number as long as there is balance in it.

There’s no rule as such. The rules state “inactivity”. That is generally defined as no chargeable activity occurring for a period of at least 90 days. After that, operator is free to terminate the connection and balance will be forfeited. The irony is you can’t perform a chargeable activity without having an “active pack”.

This answers it. The mobile operators are definitely ruling the people indirectly. I wish those days of Unlimited Validity and dependence on talktime to make calls come back.

The entry of Jio, from a consumer point of view might seem great, but even Jio shot itself in the leg to try and seem consumer-friendly. A simple example
There was a time when tele-advertisem*nt was permitted only from telecom-operator provided special numbers and strictly regulated too. Today any chap can get a SIM with unlimited calls, put them in a small portable device, hook it up to a computer running software and make as many calls as possible before the SIM is banned. None of this creates any revenue for the operator.

I get spam calls where i pick up the phone and system says no one is available to talk to me.