Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Jio to bill customers more

New Delhi: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Sunday said it will raise call and data plan charges for pre-paid customers from December 3, becoming the second operator after Vodafone Idea to announce an increase in its tariffs.

"Bharti Airtel today announced its revised tariff plans for its mobile customers. These tariffs will be applicable from Tuesday, December 3, 2019," the company said in a statement.

The company too announced new plans which will cost up to 50 per cent more compared to the price that Airtel pre-paid customers pay at present for plans in the "unlimited" category.

"Airtel's new plans, represent tariff increases in the range of a mere 50 paise per day to Rs 2.85 per day and offer generous data and calling benefits," the statement said.

In addition, Airtel said that it will provide exclusive benefits as part of the Airtel Thanks platform, which enables access to premium content from Airtel Xstream -- comprising 10,000 movies, exclusive shows, and 400 TV channels, Wynk Music, device protection, anti-virus protection and much more.

Like Airtel, in a first mobile tariff hike in past four years, telecom operator Vodafone Idea on Sunday announced new plans on similar lines.

Besides this, Vodafone Idea will also charge 6 paise per minute for every outgoing call made by customers on to the network of other operators.

"Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), India's leading telecom service provider, today announced new tariffs/plans for its prepaid products and services. New plans will be available across India starting 00:00 hours of 3 December 2019," the company said in a statement.

The company has announced new plans in "unlimited" category with 2 days, 28 days, 84 days, 365 days validity which on the back of the envelope calculations show are costlier by up to 50 per cent.

Vodafone Idea has only revised rates of plan promising unlimited mobile and data services and also introduced some new plans.

A company official explained all the existing plans in unlimited category will be replaced by the new plans from December 3 and new plans will be introduced or revised based on market response.

Though the company classifies a set of plans in 'unlimited' category, these actually come with usage limit for data at a promised speed and 100 SMS per day limit.

The highest rate of increase of 50 per cent has been announced by the company in annual unlimited category plan which will cost Rs 2,399 instead of 1,699 at present.

The starting plan with data offering of 1.5 Gb per day with 84 days validity in "unlimited" category will cost around 31 per cent more at Rs 599 compared to Rs 458 at present.

The company will raise the price of Rs 199 unlimited plan, which offers 1.5 Gb data per day, by about 25 per cent to Rs 249.

Vodafone Idea which is reeling under massive debt of around Rs 1.17 lakh crore had earlier cited acute financial stress on the company behind the decision to raise mobile call and data charges.

Last but not the least, Reliance Jio also on Sunday said it will launch new unlimited plans from December 6, which will raise its voice and data tariff by up to 40 per cent.

The Mukesh Ambani led company, however, said that customers will get up to 300 per cent more benefits under the new plans and it will offer fair usage policy for outgoing calls from its subscribers on the network of other telecom operators.