After slashing data rates for its prepaid customers, country’s largest mobile operator Airtel has slashed data rates for its postpaid subscribers. Airtel now offer up to 50% more data on its postpaid data packs. The move follows recent introduction of postpaid infinity plans which offer unlimited voice calling along with 100 SMS per day, 1GB 3G / 4G data for Rs 1,199.
Similar to its prepaid data packs, 500MB data pack now comes at a reduced price of Rs 150, while the 1GB data pack remains unchanged at Rs 250.
Data packs Rs 450, Rs 650 and Rs 850 comes with increased data usage of 3GB, 5Gb and 7GB respectively. Postpaid data packs starting from Rs 1000 now offer effective data rate of Rs 100/GB. Data packs Rs 1000, Rs 1500 and Rs 2000 offer 10GB, 15GB and 20GB respectively.
10GB data pack on Airtel earlier used to cost Rs 1500 has now come down to just Rs 1000. Recent earnings report published by the company showed decline of 2.5% in Airtel’s data realisations, which were coupled with the reduced data volume growth in the April-June quarter. During the quarter, the telco also saw customers using mobile broadband dropped to 23% in India.
Looks like, Jio fever is spreading very fast among incumbent operators. Jio which is slated starts its commercial operations shortly is seen as big threat by incumbent operators. Airtel already expects impact on its revenue post Jio’s commercial services launch. Recently, Idea and Vodafone had also reduced its data rates following Airtel's move.
Inputs: Ejaz
