New Delhi, March 24 -- A long-standing anomaly in telecom pricing that effectively nudges users into 13 recharges a year is back in the spotlight. The government is looking to push operators to more actively promote their 30-day recharge plans to improve consumer awareness, according to communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. The issue was recently raised by lawmaker Raghav Chadha in parliament. He flagged that the operators offer so-called 'monthly' recharge plans with a validity of 28 days. The same prompts users to recharge 13 times a year instead of 12 and puts additional burden on them. "We are urging TSPs (telecom service providers) to market that 30-day plan a little more, but that is already prevalent," Scindia told Mint. The minister said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has clearly mandated that the bundle of plans that any operator comes out with must have "a one-time plan, a custom plan, and all three categories of plans that have a 30-day plan". "I cannot say to you that you only need to have a 30-day plan. You can do your marketing and your sort of selling based on what you'd like to do. But in that bouquet, you must have a 30-day plan," Scindia said, adding that the regulator's order is complied by all the operators. To be sure, Chadha had recommended that 28-day recharge plans should be discontinued and that the telecom operators be required to provide standardized 30-day or one-month validity for all monthly recharge plans. The lawmaker had also said incoming calls and text messages should remain active for at least one year after the last recharge and the deactivation of numbers should happen after a grace period of three years. Asked about the issues around discontinuation of incoming calls after the recharge plan expires, the minister said, "I don't want to get into tariff issues because as you know the sector is in forbearance," Scindia said. The discontinuation of incoming calls after a recharge expires is linked to tariff policy, as it forms part of how telecom operators structure their prepaid plans and validity conditions. Under the tariff forbearance regime followed by Trai, operators have flexibility to decide pricing and service terms, including when incoming services are restricted after plan expiry. Tariff forbearance means that a regulator, such as Trai, chooses not to control or fix prices of certain telecom services, leaving operators free to set their own rates. However, the regulator still retains an oversight to ensure fair practices and prevent abuse of market power. Currently, Trai is also looking into both the matter of validity period of recharge plans and incoming calls, after the concerns were raised afresh in parliament, an official said, adding that the department of telecommunications (DoT) approached the regulator for comments. In 2022, the regulator had issued a tariff order, mandating that all operators offer at least one 30-day plan in each category of prepaid vouchers: plan vouchers, special tariff vouchers and combo vouchers. The order aimed to give consumers a fairer alternative to the prevalent 28-day recharge plans, which effectively required 13 recharges per year. The regulator also directed operators to offer plans that renew on the same date every month, ensuring alignment with calendar months and improving transparency. While the order did not ban 28-day plans, it sought to provide consumers with a choice of monthly validity plans, promoting convenience and better value. "We would like to state that in a year, every month varies in terms of number of days like 28/29, 30 and 31 days. Hence, even if the tariff offering for 30 days is mandated then the scenarios remain the same and consumers will have to recharge more than once in months having 31 days," the Cellular Operators Association of India (Coai), which represents major telecom operators, had said in response to Trai's consultation on the subject in 2021....