Other Telcos to follow Airtel
Bharti Airtel has increased call tariffs by 20-50% in some regions of the country as it marks the first hike by an incumbent operator in three years.
Industry buzz claims Bharti will extend the price hike to other parts of the country soon. Its primary competitors in the GSM space - Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular - are expected to follow suit. The six regions where Bharti has increased local and long distance call rates include Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
The savage price war has resulted in Indian consumers enjoying rock bottom tariffs - the lowest in the world. The tariff cuts also destroyed the profitability of most mobile phone companies in the 14-player market. It resulted in the industry's revenues being stagnant for the last two years despite the sector adding over 400 million new customers during this period. Bharti is also the second major operator to increase call rates over the last couple of weeks.
Tata TeleServices, which had unleashed the price war with its per-second billing-based GSM offering about two years ago, recently doubled STD call charges for new subscribers after a year of connection and raised local and national SMS charges by 67% and 25% respectively.
Recently, in the Mumbai region, most operators, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, increased long-distance or STD calls tariffs.
Consumers calling from an Airtel number to another in the same network whether local or STD would now have to pay 60 paise per minute, an increase of 10 paise. If an Airtel customer calls a local or STD landline belonging to another operator, the call charges would be 90 paise per minute, compared to 60 paise a minute being offered earlier. Apart from raising tariffs for calls per minute, the telco also changed its per-second billing plans. An Airtel customer would now have to pay 1.2 paise per second rather than 1 paise per second for a local or STD call to anyone in the same network. Calling a local or STD landline from an Airtel number on per second basis will now cost 1.5 paise a second compared to 1.2 paise a second. Customers not opting for advantage and freedom packs will have to pay the old rate of Re. 1 for local and 1.5 for STD calls.
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