New Delhi: The caller tune on coronavirus is going to stop soon, news agency ANI quoted official sources as saying on Monday.
Telecommunications operators had set the pre-call audio announcements at the start of the pandemic. The announcement from the government comes after almost two years of raising awareness about Covid-19.
According to a report by news agency PTI, certain people have complained about the fact that these audio clips delay critical calls during emergencies. They said that the clips have served their intended purpose.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had written a letter to the Union Health Ministry requesting it to drop these pre-call announcements and caller tunes, PTI reported.
The DoT cited representations received from Cellular Operators Association of India (COA) as well as mobile subscribers.
The Union Health Ministry had directed the DoT to issue instructions for implementation of Covid-19 pre-call announcements and caller tunes to telecom service providers.
These service providers have been playing the pre-call announcements and caller tunes related to coronavirus to spread awareness amongst citizens and tell them about the precautions and vaccination to be taken during the pandemic.
In a letter written recently to the Union Health Ministry, the DoT said that the message being played across networks invariably results in holding up and delaying critical calls from going through during emergencies and ends in consumption of precious bandwidth resources. The DoT further said that this overloads the TSPs network and creates a significant delay in call connection, and that it also impacts customer experience.
The DoT added that many have approached the telecom service providers to deactivate these as it is a hindrance when the customers need to make urgent calls, and that many complaints through Right to Information (RTI) have requested to deactivate the RBTs (ring back tone) as the citizens are not able to connect to the people in case of emergencies.