Reliance Communications hikes tariffs by 20 % across India

Reliance Communications has hiked tariffs by 20 per cent across India, the second time in the last seven six months, and has cut promotional and concessional offers by as much as 65 per cent. The move is to bring in greater revenues per minute and profitability.

The new tariffs would be applicable to all existing and new customers with immediate effect, the Anil Ambani group firm said in a statement.

''Our headline tariff increase from 1.2 to 1.5 paisa per second in October last year did not see any traffic elasticity and there has been no fall in customer demand or change in usage patterns, as we successfully migrated our entire base to the headline tariff," says RCom Chief Executive Officer (Wireless) Gurdeep Singh.

Singh said, "With the Indian telecom industry now heading for a phase of consolidation, with smaller operators shutting down or scaling down their operations and easing off hyper-competitive pressures, this will help pricing power move back to serious, long-term and pan-India scale operators and positively impact profitability,'' .

The tariffs for all commitment plans, used by a large number of customers, were hiked by 20-30 per cent.

''We have now corrected all Commitment Plans across the country and have increased tariffs by between 20 per cent and 30 per cent,'' he added.

It hiked 'Commitment Plan 21' and 'Commitment Plan 45' tariffs to 1.2 paisa from 1 paise per second, and migrated entire base to headline tariffs of 1.5 paise.

It also slashed on-net minutes (calls on the company's network) under 'Commitment Plan 48' to 160 local minutes from the earlier 500 minutes. This is a reduction of 65 per cent, it said.

RCom, also affected a 30 per cent reduction under its 'Commitment Plan 46' to 140 local On-net minutes, against the earlier 200 minutes.

Mumbai, 06th May 2013: Details: