High tariffs hit Reliance Jio’s 4G growth

Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom company, reported a new low in net subscriber additions during the Oct-Dec period, managing to add just about 4.4 million net new users during the final three months of the year. This is the lowest net addition for any three-month period since the company started commercial operations four years ago. […]

Reliance Jio hikes data price by removing data-only plan

Data costs on Reliance Jio network have gone up again as the operator has withdrawn its only data-only data and has made it mandatory for all consumers to also activate a voice pack to consume data services. The only data-only plan it had on offer — Jio Cricket Pack — used to give 2 GB […]

Jio blames rivals for low data price, seeks TRAI help

Reliance Jio, the country’s largest telecom operator by size, said attempts to increase telecom tariffs have failed due to competitive actions by rivals, and asked TRAI to intervene to raise data prices. Traditionally, it is Jio’s rivals such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea which make such allegations. Responding to a TRAI consultation paper on […]

Pushed to the brink, Vodafone Idea gives Jio a fight

Vodafone Idea, an operator that is struggling to stay afloat, seems to have finally decided to abandon its long-held strategy of allowing Reliance Jio to undercut it on prices and lure away its customers. For the last four years, Vodafone and Idea always allowed Jio to price its offerings lower, thus helping the Mukesh Ambani […]

Jio reduces validity of long-term plans to 11 months

Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator, has reduced the validity of its long-term recharges from 1 year to 11 months. Other operators continue to offer 1 year validity for their yearly plans. Jio used to offer two yearly plans – one priced at Rs 2,020 and another priced at Rs 1,299. The costlier plan was […]

Jio’s 6 paise charge led to massive shift in customers to Airtel

Reliance Jio’s decision to charge 6 paise per minute for outgoing calls to other networks had a massive impact on consumer behavior, according to indications from Bharti Airtel’s numbers and management commentary. Jio had, on October 9, announced that it was withdrawing all plans that came with free minutes to non-Jio networks, and from then […]

Airtel keen for a second round of price increase

Bharti Airtel, the former No.1 telecom operator in India, said it is keen on having a second round of price increases in the year starting April, but can do it only if the rest of the industry follows suit. Airtel said it needs to get more money from its customers to ensure that its investors […]

TRAI unlikely to recommend floor pricing

Telecom regulator TRAI is unlikely to recommend floor pricing for voice and data services in India due to ideological as well as practical reasons, according to industry officials. The telecom regulator today came out with a consultation paper saying it wants to broad-base the discussion on setting minimum price for data and voice. At present, […]

Reliance Jio says it will increase tariffs soon

Following Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio too has announced that it will increase tariffs over the next few weeks. “We will..take measures including appropriate increase in tariffs in next few weeks in a manner that does not adversely impact data consumption or growth in digital adoption and sustains investments,” the company said a […]

Vodafone Idea, Airtel announce tariff hikes, will Reliance Jio follow?

Hours after Vodafone Idea announced that it would increase tariffs from next month to tide over acute financial stress, rival Bharti Airtel announced it would follow suit. The two companies have traditionally kept their prices in sync. The move comes in the wake of an unexpected Supreme Court judgment that directed these companies to shell […]

No More Free Calls on Jio, Customers To Pay 6p/min for non-Jio calls

Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator by revenue, said it has decided to charge 6 paise per minute for calls made to other operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea due to TRAI’s decision to possibly continue with the six-paise-per-minute termination charge. TRAI had, two years ago, announced that the ‘termination charge’, paid by one […]

Vodafone Idea’s ‘minimum recharge plans’ starts to hurt

When Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel started cutting off the incoming call facility of low-spending customers around 4-5 months ago, the idea was to force these customers to stop using one of the SIM cards for incoming only. The idea was that if customers are forced to recharge their legacy numbers once every month for […]

4G PRICES: Vodafone takes off gloves in fight with Reliance Jio

With a long and painful process of merger with Idea Cellular over, Vodafone India has started has begun slashing its 4G prices and has dislodged new entrant Reliance Jio as India’s cheapest 4G provider. Vodafone Idea, which has been bleeding millions of customers every month in the face of relentless competition, has slashed the price […]

Vodafone Idea withdraws all prepaid recharges, to have only 5 schemes

Vodafone Idea, India’s No.1 telecom operator, said it has decided to withdraw all existing recharges and replace them with five coupons with specific validity. The recharge balance has to be used within the validity period, or it will be lost. With this, a customer has to spend at least Rs 35 per month to keep […]

Airtel ends ‘lifetime free incoming’; to charge Rs 35/month

Bharti Airtel said it has stopped the policy of allowing users to continue on its network even if they spend nothing on outgoing calls and use their numbers only for receiving incoming calls. The company said it has done this by removing many of its existing prepaid vouchers and plans, and replacing them with ‘minimum […]

No more price cuts, says Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel said it expects prices in India’s telecom sector to start climbing again in around six months or so, and indicated it has no stomach for further price competition with newcomer Reliance Jio. The comments by company officials come a few months after Reliance Jio slashed its 4G prices citing actions from rivals such […]