Just a few days after Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea hiked their prices in plans, Reliance Jio on November 28, increased the price of their plan by almost 20 per cent and announced that the new plans will be available from 1st of December this year.
All of the three primary telecos of the country have now enhanced the prices of the plans in order to bring in more revenue from the customers.
The telecom stated, “In line with its commitment to further strengthen a sustainable telecom industry, where every Indian is empowered with a true digital life, Jio today announced its new unlimited plans.” “These plans will provide the best value in the industry,” it added.
As per the information, the plan will set the entry price to Rs 91, while 11 other mobile phone plans and four data packages will be around or over 20% more expensive. However, during the July-September month, the Reliance Jio Company lost over 11 million users.
Impact of the pandemic on telecos like Reliance Jio:
It was due to the pandemic that these companies had to wait for almost two years in order to implement the hike in the plans. The last price hike was witnessed in December of 2019.
It was this year when after a long period of wait the Airtel announced a 20%-25% hike across all its prepaid plans which are implemented from November 26, 2021. Hereafter, Vodafone too hiked their prices in plan the very next day.
Well, the telecom sector in India has been witnessing a need for higher average revenues from each user. The telecos are however, thankful to the ballooning debts, high taxes and levies coupled with the need to upgrade to 5G.
Airtel’s Sunil Bharti Mittal stated in a conference that the company is under ‘tremendous stress’. “We will not hesitate to do it (raise tariffs), but it can’t be done unilaterally. How long can you keep on killing each other, the point is when you have a return on capital, even by the best operator, at low single-digit and most of them are struggling.” Bharti Airtel gave this statement in July of year 2021, and it’s since then that the company has hiked all prices of the existing plans.
A senior executive from one of the telecos stated, “The telcos via COAI have said unless airwave prices are not dropped by 60-70%, then 5G auctions won’t be successful. The three telcos will participate better if prices are lowered.”
