[Aditya]

About a billion mobile phone subscribers will pay up to 40% or so more to make calls and use data from this month, with private operators Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea increasing prices for the first time since 2016 to shore up finances.

Analysts said the increases would be the biggest in India’s telecom industry, with pricing of voice services back for most plans.

Both increased rates only for prepaid subscribers, who account for over 90% of their user base, starting December 3. Price increases by Jio, which caters to 355 million customers, will be effective from December 6.

Jio said its plans, which are yet to be unveiled, will be up to 40% higher, although it will provide up to 300% more benefits than its competitors.

Vodafone Idea and Airtel have also taken a leaf out of Jio’s books and rolled out a fair usage policy (FUP) to cap daily usage in unlimited calling plans. After a limit, customers will be charged 6 paise per minute for a call to other networks.

Analysts said the higher-than-expected tariff increases would lead to significant revenue gains and a re-rating of stocks. They would also help attract investments in Airtel and Vodafone Idea, which are looking to raise funds to pay over Rs 35,000 crore and over Rs 53,000 crore, respectively, in adjusted gross revenue (AGR)-based dues by January, as per a Supreme Court ruling.

in six to nine months, telcos may start charging for calls made within their networks and because of this, the dual-SIM phenomenon may come back.

Both telcos have revised their basic price plans of Rs 35, which gave customers 100 MB of data for 28 days, to Rs 49, a 40% jump. Those who want 200 MB for about a month will now have to pay Rs 79 instead of Rs 65, a 21% increase.

VIL has upped the tariffs by 50% for some of its most popular plans. The Rs 399 plan that gave subscribers 1GB per day for 84 days has been replaced with one costing Rs 599 and offering 1.5 GB a day for a similar period.

Airtel’s subscribers who want to get 1.5 GB and 2 GB data a day for almost three months will see their expenses up by Rs 1.66 a day and Rs 2.22 a day, respectively.

Source

[saket77]

I have an Airtel and one BSNL connection. Airtel has announced the new tariff and the hike is effective from today. Looks like they have replaced the 399 plan with Rs. 598 plan with a capping of 3000 minutes of calls to other networks. This is 50% increase in the prices.

Reliance Jio will increase the prices from 06th of December. My other service provider, BSNL has intimated that prices will be increased but the new plans are probably not out as yet.

Hope the Telcos will strike a balance between profitability and consumer budget. Expect a lot of people who keep multiple sims and those from lower sections of society to drop a lot of connections altogether.

[2000rpm]

Post paid will follow I guess. The question is when?

I expect steeper hikes in Postpaid connections as the barrier to switch are higher.

[alpha1]

Off late I have seen that the signal coverage / connectivity of Jio has degraded quite a lot with multiple call drops especially if making call to outside network.
I am ready to pay high but I should get a reliable signal that works without getting disconnected, especially when I am on the move (in highways).

What is the point of having a "mobile" connection if one has to be stationary (at office / home) to use it effectively?

[AnandB]

Jio has a severe problem for receiving sms which make online banking (OTP) troublesome as it works randomly.

[vinit.merchant]

Originally Posted by 2000rpm

I expect steeper hikes in Postpaid connections as the barrier to switch are higher.

Can you please explain the "barrier to switch are higher" part?

Although I never switched to pre-paid and continued with my more than a decade old post paid, re-negotiating it every now and then.

I just re-negotiated mine to 249 a month 3-4 weeks back and upcoming billing will be the first one. Lets see if they honor it.
I was seriously considering shifting to prepaid, considering the ridiculously low amounts that my colleagues paid each month, and I saw no advantage of postpaid over prepaid, except for the pain of remembering to recharge each month.

Guess I will continue to stick to post-paid

[harry10]

We have 4 jio connections at home. Recharged them all today. Even after price increase Jio will be cheaper than the competition and the data fup will be more as well. Personally i am quite happy with my jio connection, hence ported my 2nd number which was Vodafone earlier to Jio too.

[dark.knight]

It's simple :

Less user base, prohibitively expensive (1995-05)

More user base, lesser cost (2005-08)

Competition + more users, even less cost (08-12)

Stabilization overall of cost & user base despite competition (12-16)

Jio introduction+disruption, higher user base and demand but lowest record costs benchmark set by Jio (16-19)

Stabilization of cost and user base despite competition (20-~)

Its cyclical, Uninor did the same damage when they entered, lowering costs and forcing the others to do the same, but for the horrendous treatment of them by the then government due to their heavy blunder of licensing, Uninor/Telenor would've been a huge player today.

People I know today, all of reasonably well off are crying for no reason.. the Jio effect has caused people to think a hundred bucks a month is the maximum for unlimited calls and net, so quickly they forget the Rs. 3/- cost per minute in the early 00s..lol. They feel Jio has cheated them (they took an additional Jio number like it was all the rage) and when I ask them to ditch Jio since the freebies arent there anymore, they want to have the cake and eat it too.

Oh the brainwashed, dumb consumers over whom companies and banks dance over these days. Like rats in a wooden maze they make them run while looking from above. The cost rise is so insignificant that it wouldn't matter at all, if you must still protest, give up your additional connections and stop talking/browsing TikTok, WhatsApp and YouTube so much. The user base correction will revise prices all over again.

[Eddy]

I am in the telco industry and extremely happy with this price rise. Maybe the operators will start spending again and benefit service providers like us.

Cheers !!

[rdst_1]

What options are left for normal subscribers like me who neither need as much mobile data and nor have the call volume to justify spending 200+ for a single number. Jio has no option for no data plans apart from the Jio phone plan. I wouldn't even mind paying by the minute as we used to do not too long ago but can't find any plans for reduced tariff rates or even any mention of normal tariffs even on Airtel plans.

[GTO]

As long as the network quality improves, I have absolutely no problem. In fact, I encourage a higher rate so that the industry becomes healthy & sustainable for all.

I used to pay 1,000+ bucks / month a decade ago for my Vodafone postpaid. After Jio launched, overnight it came down to ~400 bucks / month. We recently got onto Vodafone's family plan and are paying a paltry 200 bucks / month for each phone (Rs 999 family plan for 5 connections).

That is dirt cheap! In fact, it is too cheap and among the lowest in the world. Vodafone's network sucks right now & I blame this cheap pricing for it. I will happily pay double or triple my current monthly bill for a superior network.

[Red Liner]

Is there some family kind of plan on airtel prepaid? Trying to look this up as well.

999/for 5 phones is quite cheap.

[Chetan_Rao]

On paper, for Airtel's 499 postpaid plan, I get 75 GB of data per month. In reality, network coverage sucks so bad I can hardly use 10% of it, and that's a generous estimate. Most data-intensive work is done on Wi-Fi to keep my sanity. Forget yoga, trying to make calls has had the most impact on my day-to-day fitness.

We need to get to realistic; tarrifs, usage quotas, network quality, everything.

[drsingh]

You guys are complaining too much.The rise in pricing of car service, insurance,toll,road taxes, engine oil,fuel taxes,tyre prices:
Have basically doubled in the past 3 years in many cases.
That has had much more impact on your household budget.

Phone services are cheap as chips.


I get 300-400 cashback every month on Banking/shopping/recharge apps. More discounts on online shopping on mobile apps. Your phone bill is essentially free if you're paying upto 400 rupees.If you're paying 200 rupees and keep your midrange phone for 3 years, your phone is essentially free too.

The network effect of more people getting on mobile internet shopping/TV/movies/music has reduced entertainment spend of the family as well as Banking/bills/shopping spends.

[xway]

Foolish move by telecom companies to penalize the easiest community i.e. individual consumers or personal users.

While they have so many sources of revenue, they don't monetize them and cry when suffer losses.

They in turn increase tariff for individuals who don't have enough volumes or any
commercial usage to pay more.

E.g. I dont use SMS at all or maybe once in a blue moon and they charge me Re. 1 or Rs. 1.50 (yes std and local still exists that too in sms - talk about technological boundaries ), so even if they increase it double to Rs. 2 or Rs. 5, it can never generate enough revenue for sure.

They should ideally target commercial establishments like property companies,
insurance, banking, credit card, investment brokers, shares, real estate, advertisments
etc. who form bulk of the usage and run businesses through calls and sms.

Here are the revenue leakages which can earn them big amounts :

Calls - Above mentioned companies call all through the day non-stop and use the voice calls in high volumes, telecom should increase tariff for these guys. You will be surprised to know that call charges for them are negligible or almost free at less than 0.1p per call or even lesser through unlimited plans.

SMS - While they charge individual subscibers Rs. 1 or Rs. 1.50 or Rs. 10-50
depending on whether its local or std or isd, for marketing and business community they as low as 0.01 paisa, no doubt you keep on getting thousands of messages each day. This leads to spamming as they are not bothered of wasting there sms and others
trouble of dealing with these is none of their problems.

Sim Cards - How many times do individuals buy Sim cards ? - but commerical users
buy these in 1000s each day and throw them away once they feel their calls and messages have been blocked by most phones, telecom companies can charge high for new connections / sims whereas its just the opposite and you get it free.

Due to poor planning by telecoms and trai we are bombarded with unlimited spam calls and messages, while the companies have no cost to do these and in turn make the telecom companies bleed losses.

Solution is simple but no one is intrested to address the real concern here.
So easiest thing to do is raise tariffs, which they did already a couple of times with no success and dont think will see results unless the real issue is fixed.