New Delhi: According to reports in the media, telecom carriers Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea are planning to raise their prepaid Tarrif by Diwali 2022.

This will be the second prepaid tariff hike in a year; the three private Indian telecoms had already raised the cost of their prepaid plans in November 2021.

According to a report originally seen by ET Telecom and citing Mayuresh Joshi, Head of Stock Research at the Indian subsidiary of US equity research company William O’ Neil & Co., Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea are planning to boost prepaid pricing by roughly 10%.
According to the report, Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea intend to increase their prepaid tariffs by 10-12 percent, bringing the ARPU (average revenue per user) to Rs 200, Rs 185, and Rs 135, respectively.

Even though the three telecom carriers raised the pricing of their prepaid plans in November-December, there was no drop in active consumers in the March quarter of 2022, including for Vodafone Idea. This indicates that the Indian market is prepared for another price increase. It’s worth noting that telecom plan costs are still among the most affordable in the world. Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea are expected to gain roughly 40 million or 4 crore new subscribers by 2020, according to estimates at the end of FY 2023.

The new mobile subscriptions will be driven by rural consumers in the country, whose tele-density is currently less than 58 percent, compared to more than 130 percent in urban regions. In terms of telecom providers, Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel and Mukesh Ambani’s Jio are likely to win the most new users, while Vodafone Idea would have to make do with small gains.