Your phone bills are set to increase. The cheap data that was made available by telecom giants all this while, was after all a short-lived phenomenon. The country’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio on Thursday announced that it will increase its mobile services rates… and quickly Airtel jumped on the opportunity and announcement a price hike on tariff plans on Friday. The question of who will blink first to increase ARPU – or average revenue per user – has finally been answered. Jio took the lead… and the telecom industry is happily following. Of course, the customer will have to pay the price.
Over all, mobile phone bills for subscribers will go up from anything between 10% to 27% depending on what plats they currently have.
Reliance Jio announced a 12-27% hike in tariffs for all mobile plans across prepaid and postpaid segments affecting its over 472 million users. The Rs 155 plan will now cost Rs 189, while the popular Rs 239 monthly plan, offering 1.5 GB data per day, will be revised to Rs 299, a 25% increase.The annual package will see the highest hike, from Rs 2,999 to Rs 3,599.
Additionally, the unlimited 5G data – a service that hasn’t until now made money for telcos - will now only be available with plans offering at least 2GB/day. In parallel, Jio has also rolled out new unlimited 5G data plans.
Not far behind, Bharti Airtel also raised tariff prices by 10% - 21%. The Rs 179 monthly plan will now be Rs 199, offering 2GB data per day. The Rs 1,799 annual plan will now cost Rs 1,999.
The company in a statement said that it has increased the price of its entry-level plans by 70 paise, in order to eliminate any burden on budget challenged consumers.
These revised tariffs for both telecom operators will be effective from July 3rd, and Vodafone Idea is expected to follow suit.
The telecom sector last raised tariffs by 20-25% in November 2021. Before that, tariffs saw a hike in December 2019, the first one after Jio launched its service in 2016. So this is the first major hike after 2021, although the telcos kept on tweaking certain plans to increase revenue realisation.
Remember, this hike has come immediately after the 10th spectrum auction.
Jio and Airtel, the top two telecom operators, have already invested over Rs 2 lakh crore in rolling out 5G, but so far there has been no return on investment. Telecoms have also offered free 5G services in a bid to lure customers.
And now in absence of monetization of 5G services Telecoms are eyeing to raise revenue through tariffs revision, aimed at shoring up average revenue per user which is crucial to enable substantial investments required to expand 5G spectrum as well as to enhance the network load capacity and offer a modest return on capital for telcos.

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