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

India’s top telcos Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio), Bharti Airtel NSE 0.34 % and Vodafone Idea NSE 0.99 % (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.