Jio, Airtel, Vodafone Idea Unlikely to Hike Tariffs Given Iran Conflict

Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi), the top three private telecom operators in India, are unlikely to hike mobile tariffs. Mobile plans have indirectly already become very expensive, given telcos have engaged in marginal hikes one way or the other over the last two years. The last major hike for mobile plans came in July 2024. Since then, the analysts expected the telcos to hike the tariffs in the next two years as per the trend.

• Make Telecom Talk My Trusted Source
• 
• 

However, things are very different now from a global scenario. The geopolitical tensions in the west have worsened the market conditions for consumers. Everything has become expensive, including fuel, food, and logistics. This in turn has put a lot of pressure in the pockets of the consumers.

That is why, the telcos will have no other option but to ideally hold the tariff hikes. There is one thing though. The industry revenues grew by 13% in FY25, however, in the absence of a tariff hike in FY26 or the following year, the industry revenues grew by 10%. In FY27, if there are no hikes, the growth could come down to single digits.

Analysts Expect Jio, Airtel and Vi to Increase Tariffs by 15%

According to the analysts, the price of mobile plans could go up by about 15% industry wide when the telcos engage in tariff hikes next. This approximately translates to a price surge of about Rs 50 for the base 28 days validity pack which comes with 1.5GB of daily data. Even access to 5G plans could become more expensive for the consumers, resulting in subdued 5G consumption.

A 15% hike in the tariffs would boost the industry revenues by almost 11% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 3 lakh crore in FY27, Motilal Oswal said in its recent report. The brokerage firm said that whenever the telcos have seen the revenue growth coming down to a single digit in the recent past, they have engaged in tariff hikes.

“Historically, we have observed that industry leaders’ wireless revenue growth moderating to single digits YoY has been a precursor to the next round of tariff hikes,” said Motilal Oswal in its latest brokerage report.

In the last quarter of financial year ending March 2026, the revenue growth of the telcos slowed down to 7% YoY. This means that the growth could slow down even further in the following quarter. We are currently in the last month of Q1 FY27. If the telcos were to hike the tariffs, it could come in the first week of Q2 FY27, just like in 2024.

A rise in tariffs will allow the telcos to boost their ARPU (average revenue per user) which would be very important to boost overall revenues and improve EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margins. Without a tariff hike, even Jio would not want to go ahead with the IPO as investors would want better returns in the near future.

ICRA, another ratings and research firm, recently mentioned, “ARPUs for FY2026 increased by around 8.2% YoY to about Rs 220, and are expected to improve further by 3-5% to around Rs 230 in FY2027, supported by likely tariff hikes in FY2027.”

There are also expectations that the next round of tariff hikes will not be your regular price hikes, instead, it could be a new tariff structure. This new structure could result in people paying more for using more, in a simple sense.