• Source:JND
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India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has made a major change in the process of swapping between prepaid and postpaid mobile plans. According to a June 10, 2025 directive, the cooldown period for making the switch has been halved from 90 days to an initial 30 days.

This development is an update to a previous directive on September 21, 2021, that imposed a lock-in of 90 days before users would be allowed to change their mobile plan type once again. Currently, users switching from prepaid to postpaid for the first time will be permitted to do so after 30 days.

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DoT posted the update on its official X (formerly Twitter) handle, stating that the initiative is aimed at easing mobile service changes for consumers. The upcoming OTP-based switchovers will continue to have a 90-day cooldown period, but this streamlined 30-day window is only applicable for the initial transition.

 

For those who want to change plans once more prior to the expiration of the 30 or 90-day lock-in period, DoT has come up with a clutch: users are still able to port by undertaking a Know Your Customer (KYC) authentication at a point-of-sale (PoS) or at any authorised retail outlet of their telecom operator.

This entails that, although online or OTP conversions are restricted by a cooldown, physical authentication through KYC enables customers to override that timing and switch sooner if required.

The new policy is effective for all the top telecom operators, such as Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea, and BSNL.

Also, the DoT has directed every telecom operator to explicitly inform customers regarding the applicable lock-in time with each switch between prepaid and postpaid. All security and regulatory compliance requirements in place will remain unchanged.

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To put it in a nutshell, customers can request the prepaid-postpaid switch from their telecom operator's website or mobile application or from a customer care centre. They will have to submit a conversion request along with proper KYC documentation.

The DoT, by issuing this new guideline, intends to enhance user convenience and simplify the experience of mobile plan conversion without compromising on regulatory protection.