Airtel hikes minimum prepaid tariffs, rivals may follow

CHENNAI: Bharti Airtel has initiated what is likely to be the start of the long-expected round of tariff hikes in the price-sensitive prepaid mobile services segment. With the removal of the interconnect usage charge (IUC) in January this year significantly reducing the average revenue per user (ARPU) metric across all private telcos, analysts expect that Airtel’s private sector rivals-Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea-are likely to follow suit.