Coronavirus caller tune is not applicable to these subscribers

Coronavirus caller tune has become the talk of the town. Although the Ministry of Health requested the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to ask BSNL, MTNL Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone to add a 30-second Coronavirus prevention caller tune to their networks with good intentions, subscribers across the country are apparently getting inconvenienced with this measure.

“Having hard core coronavirus caller tune is ridiculous. Once or twice in a day is still tolerable. How to make back to back calls? How to even retry?” says Naresh Prajapati on Twitter. “Please stop this Corona caller tune immediately. It is irritating to hear it every time we make a call,” says another consumer.

Several others have stated that the 30 second Coronavirus caller tune is a major obstacle when calls are made in case of an emergency. “Kindly stop that Corona virus caller tune. I am very helpless when I do a emergency call. Please Airtel Help us,” says Mehfooz Shah. However, Airtel has responded to subscribers saying “Hi! The alert has been added as per the government directive to help spread awareness of Coronavirus. Thank you.”

Ever since the Coronavirus caller tune has been introduced it has given rise to various hilarious memes and jokes on the Internet, as well as innovative measures to make the caller tune stop are being discussed on social media.

Nevertheless, users need to know that the Coronavirus caller tune is not being played for a few subscribers. Apparently, the Coronavirus advisory tune does not play for those who have subscribed for other caller tunes before DoT instructed telecom companies to add the 30 second caller tune. VoicenData called a couple of people and found that their old caller tunes were indeed playing instead of the Coronavirus advisory.

A few other users claim that one can opt-out of the Coronavirus caller tune by dialing *646*224#1. However, there is no official confirmation regarding these developments and the Coronavirus advisory continues to play for a large number of subscribers in the country.