Airtel has launched a new facility for its millions of users. Now users will be able to recharge their prepaid mobile from any ATM or even medical store.
Reliance Jio earlier this week introduced an ATM recharge facility for its customers. Bharti Airtel has also implemented the same for its customers but with more options like grocery stores and pharmacies.
The complete lockdown has been done in India for the last 11 days to prevent coronavirus infection. In such a situation, users are facing difficulty to recharge their smartphones. In view of this, the Indian telecom regulator had directed all the telecom companies not to discontinue the incoming service during the 21-day lock-down. After which all the telecom companies had announced not to discontinue incoming calls for their users and to give a prepaid balance of Rs 10.
Like other everyday goods, telecom and the internet have also been recognized as goods of people’s needs. In such a situation, users had the option of recharging their numbers and online recharge to continue these services. In such a situation, Reliance Jio started the facility of recharge for its users through ATMs. If you do not have the option to do online recharge across you, then you can recharge your number by going to the nearest ATM. For this, you have to use your debit card.
In view of this, now Bharti Airtel has also started the facility of recharging from ATM for its users. Apart from this, the company has also started a recharge facility for its users from medical or grocery stores. The grocery and medical stores will remain open during the lockdown. In such a situation, users will be able to recharge their prepaid number by going here.
Airtel has partnered with HDFC and ICICI Bank for this. If you have an account and debit card of both these banks, then you can recharge your Airtel number by going to these ATMs. Apart from this, Airtel has also partnered with Apollo Pharmacies. Users can also recharge their Airtel number by going to Apollo Pharmacies. Not only this, but Big Bazaar will also be able to recharge their mobile number from the grocery store.
This is among a list of initiatives Airtel said it has introduced to help people amid this lockdown. The telco had also announced it is extending the prepaid validity for 80 million of its low-income customers. It is also adding Rs 10 talk time to the prepaid accounts of these customers. Airtel also assured that its network will run smoothly despite the expected surge in traffic due to the lockdown.
“Our network operating centers and data centers are totally operational to ensure smooth functioning of the network. Our field staff is still on the road to ensure speedy provisioning of new connections and quick fixing of faults. Further, we have advanced investments and have added capacities to meet the surge in data demand,” Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal said in a statement.
