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'No refund. No rollover. Just gone': Raghav Chadha speaks against data limits on mobile recharge, demands carry-forward
“Telecom operators should provide rollover of unused data. What remains unused at end of day, should be added to the next day’s Daily Data Limit," he said.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Raghav Chadha on Monday spoke in the Rajya Sabha against the daily data limits in prepaid mobile recharge plans.
Telecom companies offer recharge plans with “daily data limits like 1.5GB, 2GB or 3GB per day” that reset every 24 hours. "Any unused data expires at midnight, despite being fully paid for,” Chadha said in an X post with a video clip of his Rajya Sabha intervention.
“No refund. No rollover. Just gone. This is not an accident. This is policy,” he wrote, “Use it unnecessarily, or lose it by midnight. That’s how mobile data works today.”
He said he unused data should carry forward into the next cycle.
He listed three demands related to it.
The first: “All telecom operators should provide rollover of unused data. What remains unused at the end of the day, should be added to the next day’s Daily Data Limit, not erased the moment validity ends.”
His second demand, he wrote, is that if a consumer consistently under-utilises their data over multiple cycles, “there should be a mechanism for Adjustment or Discount of that value” from the following month’s recharge amount.
“Consumers should not repeatedly pay for capacity they do not use,” he wrote.
His third demand is to allow tranfer of unused to data to relatives and friends: “Unused data should be treated as the consumer’s digital property. Users should be allowed to transfer their unused data to others, from their Daily Data Limit, just as transfer money to others. As we build a Digital India, access cannot depend on data that disappears. If you’ve paid for it, it should carry forward and remain yours to use.”
He has earlier too spoken against the 28-day recharge cycle, stating they force consumers to recharge 13 times a year rather than 12 in terms of months. He has also argued against cutting off incoming calls and SMS when a prepaid recharge expires, stating it is "arbitrary" and harmful to users, particularly those with simpler, keypad-based, “non-smart” phones who rely on them for essential services.
