Airtel prepaid plans could get a price hike as the company wants to increase the prices for a long time now. Bharti Airtel’s CEO Sunil Mittal has told Money Control that there is a need to increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) to Rs 300 per month. Mittal is asserting that even if the telecom companies increase the ARPU to Rs 300 per month, people shouldn’t have much of an issue because users are consuming up to 60GB of data per month at a lower price.
It is worth pointing out that this is not the only telecom company that desires to increase the prices of the tariff plans. Vi has also expressed the same with time, as the company believes that the existing tariffs make it pretty difficult to sustain revenue loss.
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As of Q2 FY22, Airtel’s ARPU was Rs 190, and it is being said that Reliance Jio’s average revenue per user was Rs 177.2. Vodafone-Idea (Vi) has the lowest and it was reportedly Rs 131 during the same quarter. It might be a bit difficult for Vi and Jio to reach 300 because their figure is pretty low compared to Airtel. The price hike is usually in the same percentage, so Airtel will likely take the lead if the companies increase the prices of prepaid plans.
Mittal believes that the country doesn’t have an appropriate pricing mechanism and India should have one. This suggests that we may see a price increase in prepaid mobile plans soon. Reliance Jio hasn’t yet shown its interest in increasing the price. The last price hike took place two years back.
What about 5G plan prices?
The Indian government has promised that the price of the 5G plans will be affordable for everyone, but so far it hasn’t provided any specific details on this. Jio has promised that its 5G plans price will be the lowest in the world, which is a pretty big claim. When 5G services were launched in India, it was reported that Airtel would be offering 5G plans at the price of 4G plans. The details about Vodafone-Idea 5G plans or prices are unknown.
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But, don’t expect 5G plans to arrive anytime soon because the telecom companies are still testing the latest network in many Indian cities. There are a lot of issues with 5G services right now, and one of them is frequent call drops, which is something that many people have complained about via social media platforms. Once the network becomes stable in the country, the telecom companies are expected to launch 5G prepaid plans in India. Until then, people might get to use 5G services for free. But since the network is consuming a lot of mobile data within minutes, people will likely buy more plans, which will benefit telecom companies.
