Airtel prepaid plans to get another price hike this year, CEO confirms

Just last year, telecom companies including Vodafone Idea, Reliance Jio and Airtel hiked prices of their prepaid plans. Now in a major blow to subscribers, Airtel is all set to increase the price of its prepaid plans. The news was confirmed by the company CEO Gopal Vittal. He revealed that Airtel is likely to hike the price again in 2022. This time, the average revenue per user (ARPU) will be set at Rs 200.

As per the Economic Times report, Airtel is not happy with the telecom regulator’s base prices for 5G. “The industry had hoped for a massive reduction in prices; while there has been a reduction, it has not been adequate and is in that sense, disappointing,” Vittal said during the earnings call on Wednesday. Last year, all three privately-owned telecom operators increased plan prices by almost 18 to 25 per cent.

The telecom operators are not happy with the TRAI’s recommendation for 5G reverse prices. The companies were pushing for 5G reserve prices to be lowered by 90 per cent.

“My own sense is that we should start seeing some tariff increases during the course of this year. I do believe that the tariffs at that level are still very low. The first port of call is to get to 200 which will require at least one round of tariff increase,” Vittal said about the tariff hikes. Vittal said the customers will be able to absorb the blow. The new price hike would only be a temporary blip. Despite the price hike, Airtel attracted more 4G users (5.24 million) in March. This was more in comparison to the 3 million subscribers in the previous three-month period,

Notably, Airtel was the first one to increase the prices of the prepaid plans by 18 to 25 per cent back in November 2021. Vodafone Idea also revised its tariffs in the same range, whereas Reliance Jio hiked the prices by up to 20 per cent last year. Notably, Reliance Jio hasn’t yet revealed whether it also has plans to increase the prices in 2022 if and when a tariff hike happens.