Mumbai: Bharti Airtel Ltd has increased the base-level tariff for mobile services to ₹155 from ₹99 in phases. The new tariff roll out has already begun in 18 out of the total 22 telecom circles, said an official.
As per the information, Airtel has already hiked entry-level tariff to ₹155 in Odisha and Haryana on 21 November, followed by Karnataka, Bihar, the North-East, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh-west on 24 January; and Delhi, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Uttar Pradesh-east, West Bengal, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and Assam a day later.
Also Read: Airtel launches cutting edge 5G service in Ranchi, Jamshedpur
“We are constrained to increase the base tariff in keeping with the Airtel’ commitment to provide services to the customers. The company has discontinued the metered tariff and introduced an entry-level plan of ₹155 with unlimited voice, 1GB of data and 300 SMS per day. Customers can now use this plan without any conditional restraint. We hope that the consumer may received the new tariff plans well,” said an Airtel official.
The company has rolled out the new tariff plans in phase manner to study its impact on the subscriber’s retention. “The churn out is quite low than we expected. Hence we decided to go for pan-India implementation,” said the official.
Also Read: Airtel ultrafast 5G service goes live in Patna; no sim change needed
The Airtel has embarked on the tactical move to compensate for the investment in infrastructure and technology to upgrade the users’ experience. “We feel that the customers are satisfied with the services and hence sticking to the network. We are offering larger benefits, including higher data usage and unlimited calling, compared to the previous plan,” he said.
Moreover, the hike in entry-level tariffs seems to have worked better for the Bharti Airtel, as it saw 100,000 and 200,000 active subscribers being added in Haryana and Odisha circles, respectively, in November, according to data from the sector regulator and brokerage houses.
In comparison, over the preceding six months, May-October, Odisha saw a net addition of 70,000 and Haryana customer base recorded a loss of 300,000, signifying the low impact of the changed plans, ICICI Securities said in a note.
