Telcos test waters with smaller tariff hikes before big one

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel adjusted price of its mid-to-long-term validity plans earlier this month, discontinuing the ₹799 prepaid pack while increasing the price of the ₹859 plan to ₹899. While there was no change in the data benefits, the telecom operator started bundling subscriptions to an over-the-top (OTT) streaming app.

Both plans offered 1.5 GB per day. The ₹799 plan had a validity period of 77 days, while the revised ₹899 plan offers 84 days of validity.

Vodafone Idea also adjusted and restructured some of its plans in certain circles, particularly where it has launched 5G services. The cash-strapped telco in February increased the entry price of unlimited 5G data offering to ₹349 in some circles, while in others it remained ₹299.


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More recently, Vodafone Idea revised its existing NonStopHero packs, which offered unlimited data throughout the day, to offer unlimited access to data only at night.

Reliance Jio, which is planning an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, has made just one change to its prepaid offerings, reducing the validity of its entry-level ₹195 plan to 30 days from 90 days, but it started bundling subscriptions to OTT services to justify the downgrade.

These price changes, made in the absence of headline tariff hikes which were widely expected to happen late last year, will not make any significant improvement in the average revenue per user (ARPU), a key performance metric for telecom operators, market trackers said.

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Telecom operators including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have been clamouring for increasing industry tariffs to improve their return on capital employed, which they maintain are among the lowest in the world.