Reliance Jio and Airtel, one of India's two leading telecom operators, along with Vodafone Idea also hiked their mobile tariffs in the first week of July. And this…
Reliance Jio and Airtel, one of India's two leading telecom operators, along with Vodafone Idea also hiked their mobile tariffs in the first week of July. And this time the telco increased the tariff from 11 to 24 percent. However, state-owned BSNL has not followed that path. As a result, a large number of customers have been added to this government telecom company in the last one month.
Meanwhile, the number of customers of Vodafone Idea has started to decrease. The price hike is believed to have had a massive impact on the telco's subscriber base. The company's CEO himself admitted this. Interestingly, most Vodafone Idea customers are now switching to BSNL.
Recently, Vodafone Idea CEO Akshay Mundra said in the company's Q1 earnings call that they have closely observed that the number of Vodafone IDR subscribers has started to decline after the recent tariff hike. Also, since BSNL has not hiked tariffs, more of their customers are porting to BSNL.
According to Mundra, customers have decided to port based on the tariff increase rather than considering Vodafone Idea's 4G coverage. However, he fears that as customers are now accustomed to the 4G coverage experience, they may not stick with BSNL for long. And later they may come back to another telecom operator.
