Airtel Announces Measures to Shield Over 80 Million Low-Income Mobile Customers from Impact of COVID-19 Crisis

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest integrated telecommunications company announced special measures to assist low income group customers impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

• Airtel has extended the pre-paid pack validity for over 80 million customers till April 17th, 2020. All these customers will continue to get incoming calls on their Airtel mobile numbers even after the validity of their plan is exhausted.
• Airtel will also credit an additional Rs 10 of talk time in the pre-paid accounts of all these 80 million customers to enable them to make calls or send SMS and therefore stay connected with their loved ones.

The program has been kicked off, and these benefits will be available to users in the next 48 hours.

These 80 million customers effectively cover all under-privileged households on the Airtel Network. These special measures will particularly benefit migrant workers and daily wage earners who may have been impacted due to the nationwide lockdown to combat COVID-19. All other customers on Airtel’s network are already recharging their accounts using online platforms.

With these initiatives all Airtel customers will have unrestricted access to vital information from local authorities as also be able to connect with whoever they choose to.

Airtel’s network teams continue to work 24X7 to ensure that India’s digital backbone operates seamlessly.

Shashwat Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, Bharti Airtel said “In this difficult hour of fighting off the threat of Covid-19, Airtel is committed to ensuring that all people remain connected without any disruptions. And for this objective, it is critical to take care of the under-privileged daily wage earners of our country, whose lives have been disrupted due to the lock-down”.