Your Vodafone Idea prepaid, postpaid plans may get costlier
India Today
Vodafone Idea prepaid plans will get costlier in 2022, the company CEO revealed during an earnings call.
Vodafone Idea may hike the price of its prepaid plans yet again. The telecom operator has said that it is toying with the idea of increasing the price of the prepaid and postpaid plans to bolster the dripping revenue. Vodafone had hiked the price of its prepaid plans back in November. Not only Vodafone, Airtel, and Reliance Jio prepaid plans too got expensive. However, Vodafone witnessed a decline in the subscriber base following the price hike.
“Normally, when a price increase takes place, two-three things happen. One is that recharges slow down a bit for few days. Second, we see a phenomenon of SIM consolidation. Our subscriber losses can very much be attributed to the price increase,” Ravinder Takkar, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea, said during an analyst call on the Q3 results. It was reported that Vodafone Idea lost close to 5.8 million subscribers in the third quarter, and there was a marginal increase in the 4G subscriber base.
During the earnings call, Vodafone Idea MD and CEO Ravinder Takkar said that there could be another price hike in 2022 but that will not immediately happen. The last one was almost two years earlier, which I believe is a bit long. We certainly would expect less than two years, but in 2022 we will have to see how quickly these prices get embedded. Probably, it could be 2023 as well," Takkar said.
Vodafone is currently grappling with losses. The telecom operator is currently in talks with potential investors to save the ship from sinking. The company is planning to raise Rs 25,000 crore in the last one year.
Back in November, Vodafone hiked the price of its popular plans by almost 25 percent. The base plan of Vodafone now starts at Rs 99. The company then said that the reason behind increasing the price of the prepaid plans was to improve its average revenue per user (ARPU). Vodafone has reportedly had the lowest ARPU in the industry at Rs 104. Airtel currently has the highest ARPU of Rs 153, whereas Reliance Jio has the highest ARPU of Rs 144.
