In the face of stiff competition in the Indian telecom market, telecom companies’ finances have deteriorated as telecom services have been provided for many years at low rates to retain customers.
Telecom companies
Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea and Airtel, which have been in the market for a long time, have been pushed into a severe financial crisis after the Supreme Court ruled that telecom companies should pay the spectrum and the balance in arrears and are currently operating due to various concessions offered by the central government.
Low fees
Telecom companies have been planning for the past few months to raise tariffs by 20 to 25 per cent, fearing that the company could go bankrupt if it continues to offer low-cost services.
Impact of tariff hike
The impact of the telecom tariff hike, which started in September, has seen a major shift in the number of new customer arrivals among telecom companies in October.
Reliance Jio
As Reliance Jio added about 17 lakh new customers in October, Troy announced that Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have lost more customers.
Bhart Airtel and Vodafone Idea
Bhart Airtel lost 4.9 lakh subscribers in October, while Vodafone Idea lost 9 lakh subscribers, according to data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). At the same time, only 2.78 lakh new customers have joined the entire Indian telecom market.
Yoga for Reliance Jio
Reliance Jio’s 17 lakh subscribers are mostly from other telecom companies, while Reliance Jio lost about 19 million or 1.9 crore subscribers in September.
November and December
But Airtel continues to gain more and more customers in Indian villages. BSNL lost 26,111 subscribers in October. With the new tariffs of telecom companies coming in November and December, it is expected that there will be huge changes in the number of customers during these months.
The competition is fierce, as is the financial burden on Indian telecom companies. Retaining customers in the midst of this competition is not a trivial matter.
In this situation all the companies have increased the telecom tariffs in a hurry as they have to earn more revenue to pay the arrears to the government.
Telecom customers
In this scenario customers are more likely to switch to other telecom services, Vodafone Idea did a trill work to prevent this, Reliance Jio found out and complained to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
Reliance Jio charge
Vodafone Idea has dropped the SMS service for its prepaid customers from Reliance Jio Troy to Rs 179 and above the Rs 179 plan. It has been accused of obstructing customers from porting MNP i.e. mobile number.
Jio’s solution
As a solution to this, Reliance Jio, led by Mukesh Ambani, has demanded that the Troy system declare that the SMS service for mobile number portability is free or that there is no need to recharge a high-cost plan for MNP. Reliance Jio is expected to fully investigate the allegations made against Vodafone Idea and take a decision thereafter.
