Bharti Airtel hikes pre-paid call rates, others set to follow

Mobile call rates in the country are expected to rise in the coming months with operators likely to follow the footsteps of Bharti Airtel, which increased tariffs by 20 per cent for pre-paid subscribers in six circles.
 
Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers, hiked tariff under two pre-paid plans - Advantage and Freedom - for calls and messages within its own network. Earlier, last month, Tata DoCoMo had also announced plans to hike call rates.
 
While other operators said they would decide on hiking tariffs depending on market conditions, analysts were of the opinion that an increase in call rates in India, which is the lowest in the world, was expected.

The `Advantage' plan subscribers will have to pay 60 paise per minute as against 50 paise per minute earlier. However, the rates for calls to other networks have not been changed. The circles where Bharti has increased prices are Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.

For the Freedom plan, the tariff has been revised from 1 paisa per second to 1.2 paisa per second. Here also, the rates for off-network calls have not been changed.

Customers not opting for `Advantage' and `Freedom' packs will continue to pay the existing rates of Re1 for local and Rs1.5 for STD calls.

Bharti Airtel is the second firm to hike prices as Tata Docomo, the brand under which Tata group telecom firms offer services, had informed its subscribers that after the first year of subscription, call rates would double from the current 60 paise per minute to 120 paise per minute.

Incidentally, Tata Docomo, which is now leading the tariff hike cycle, was the first to trigger price wars by lowering tariffs and offering per-second billing.

Operators are seeking to raise tariffs as they face higher costs on all fronts such as customer demands, rollout of services and maintaining network and operations.

Call rates started nose-diving nearly three years ago, when India allowed the entry of several new operators who in their desperation to get subscribers started offering lower call rates, forcing existing operators to match the new rates. India currently has over 10 operators per circle, compared with 3-4 operators in most developed markets.