Telcos tweak plans to push up ARPUs as near-term headline rate increase tough

Mumbai: India’s top telcos Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio), Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) are resorting to tweaking their tariff plans with lower data limits at higher prices but with additional validity in a bid to push average revenue per user (ARPU), given that a blanket price hike during the pandemic and amid stiff competition is difficult.

“We have indicated previously that an outright across-the-board price increase may not be easy and operators will have to widen the variety of pricing plans to effectively raise ARPU from heavy data users,” brokerage UBS said in a recent report.