Mumbai: At a time BSNL and MTNL are bleeding to death, telecom companies Vodafone-Idea, Bharti Airtel and Jio have announced increases in tariffs, as a result of which mobile calls and internet charges will go up by up to 50 per cent.
While Airtel and Vodafone have shared new rates in the "unlimited" category that will replace their existing pre-paid plans with up to 50 per cent higher cost, Reliance Jio said it will roll out new all-in-one plans with unlimited voice and data at up to 40 per cent higher price from December 6.
Vodafone Idea was the first to announce the new tariffs which will be available across the country starting 00:00 hours of December 3. Airtel followed suit by announcing similar plans to raise mobile pre-paid services rates.
Vodafone announced a maximum hike of 50 per cent in its entry level unlimited plan with a year-long validity of Rs 1,499 with 24 GB data usage limit in place of the Rs 999 plan, which comes with 12 GB data usage limit.
Airtel too announced a similar level of change but kept price of most of the new plans lower by Re 1 compared to that of Vodafone.
From December 3, customers of these two companies will have to shell out a minimum of Rs 49 to make calls, access the internet on mobile and stay connected for four weeks.
While telecom operators have been offering unlimited voice calling, both Vodafone and Bharti have decided to cap the outgoing calls outside their network from December 3.
Both the companies have capped outgoing calls to network of other telecom operator to 1,000 minutes in case of plans with 28 days validity, 3,000 in 84 days’ validity plans and 12,000 in 365 days’ validity plans. Beyond this limit,
