Bad news for Airtel users? Sunil Mittal's company sees opportunity to increase…, says ‘rich are paying…'

India.com

21 hours ago

Bharti Airtel sees potential in increasing tariffs for data services, as it believes the richer are currently underpaying while the poor need not pay more, reported PTI citing senior official.
Speaking during the company's Q1 earnings call for the current financial year, Bharti Airtel Vice-Chairman and MD Gopal Vittal said the company has approached the government seeking relief on adjusted gross revenue (AGR). He also urged that Airtel be granted the same benefits extended to other telecom operators without directly naming Vodafone Idea. Why Airtel Sees Scope In Raising Tariff For Data Services?
Talking about the business growth, Vittal said that the company's focus is to improve customer mix and continue to sustain postpaid and smartphone customers upgrade on the network.
Vittal said that he sees scope in raising tariff for data services as it is very low in India when compared to even markets that have a low per capita income.
'The architecture of pricing in India is quite skewed. At the entry level itself or just above the entry level, you get so much data allowance, calling and messaging, that you really don't have any reason to upgrade. It's just an unfortunate situation where people who can afford to pay, the rich, are paying less and the poor, you know, we don't need to charge the poor anymore,' Bharti Airtel Vice-Chairman and MD Gopal Vittal said.
He was replying to a question on tariff during the company's earnings call for the first quarter of the current fiscal. A customer needs to pay Rs 199 for a month-long connection which comes with unlimited local, STD, roaming calls and 2GB data limit.
By paying Rs 100 more a subscriber of Airtel can get 1 GB data per day and it goes up to 3 GB data per day with plans starting from Rs 449 onwards.
Vittal said if India had a more sensible pricing architecture like Indonesia ARPU (average revenue per user) would have been substantially higher than where the country's telecom industry is at present without any pain to customers at the low end. What Is Bharti Airtel's ARPU?
As per UK-based data price information platform Cable.co.uk, average data price in India was around 16 cents while in Indonesia it was around 28 cents in 2023.
Bharti Airtel India operations average revenue per user (ARPU), a key matrix to determine a telecom operator's growth, in India increased to Rs 250 during the June 2025 quarter under review compared to Rs 211 in the same period a year ago.
The mobile data consumption on Airtel's India network increased by 13.4 per cent to 26.9 GB per customer per month. The customer base of Airtel's Home Services segment, which includes fixed broadband services, grew 37.7 per cent on YoY basis to 1.09 crore but the ARPU in the segment declined by 6.1 per cent to Rs 537 in June 2025 quarter.
Vittal said that the company's capex are going into fiber and core networks. He expressed dissatisfaction with experience on the WiFi services and said that the company is making investment to fix it.
'We are not happy with some of the issues that we're facing on experience relating to our transport, hygiene, and infrastructure. A lot of work is going on there to fix that so that our churn goes down. It's still very good. I would say, industry beating but we still need to do a better job,' he said.
(With Inputs From PTI)