Increased Mobile Tariffs

Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar have increased local call charges within their own network by 20%. All pre-paid and post-paid subscribers with rentals less than Rs 150/month will have to pay Rs 1.20/min instead of Rs 1/min for Airtel-to-Airtel calls and Hutch-to-Hutch calls.

The two operators have also increased local SMS rates to Rs 1.20 per message for all users — both pre-paid and post-paid — from 1 Rs earlier. This comes within a few weeks of an increase in STD rates in Delhi. Both Bharti Airtel and Hutch had increased their STD rates to Rs 2.60/min from Rs 2.40/min and Rs 2/min, respectively.

The increase in tariff comes even as the operator’s revenue per user continues to dip over the past year. The national average is hovering around Rs 300 per user per month, which is among the lowest in the world.

Source: TOI