After Vodafone, Airtel has also decided to deactivate the accounts of customers who have not used the service for more than 60 days, and the operator plans to allocate the numbers thus generated to new customers.
Confirming the move, an Airtel spokesperson said that customers are likely to be informed soon. A detailed statement on the issue will be released by the telco very shortly.
Vodafone had earlier announced plans to deactivate numbers that have not been used for 60 days.
Idea Cellular, which has the maximum percentage of active customers (more than 92 per cent,) says it has “a strict policy for deactivating unused connections”.
Reliance Communications, which has amongst the lowest number of active customers among the five big operators, still follows a 90 days deactivation policy.
Aircel, with more than 45 per cent inactive customers, says that it will follow whatever guidelines the government comes up with.
According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the mobile subscriber base had increased to 881.4 million by October-end from 873.61 million in the preceding month.
However, the number of active mobile subscribers, according to visitor location register (VLR) data during the month was 626.18 million.