Airtel to Offer 4G Smartphones at an Effective Price of Rs 500 and Bundled Voice and Data Plan at Rs 70

Bharti Airtel is reportedly in talks with smartphone manufacturers to offer a 4G smartphone as low as Rs 500 along with a bundled tariff plan priced between Rs 60-Rs 70. Alongside Airtel, other top telcos Vodafone India and Idea Cellular will also join the bandwagon and bring down the prices of smartphones to Rs 500. Maybe this upcoming scheme from Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular works similar to the existing schemes of offering cashbacks after a certain amount of time with entry-level 4G smartphones.

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That said, this approach is clearly different from that of Reliance Jio’s as it’s subsidising the JioPhone to garner more users. And the bundled tariff plan will compete with JioPhone’s Rs 49 plan which offers unlimited voice calls without any limit for the month.

“We will gear towards low-cost smartphones via alliances. Smartphones are expected to become cheaper, so for an offering with them, it makes more sense than setting up our own phones,” said an executive at one of the telcos to Economic Times. Also, the report added the emails sent by them to the telcos are unanswered.

Analysts say that the ARPU of the three telcos will hurt badly with this move, but it seems like the telcos are in a mindset of retaining subscriber base and allow them to upgrade to a smartphone with consuming mobile data.

“An executive at another operator said the intention is to bring down the effective prices of smartphones to the level of feature phones or even lower with bundled data and voice packages and cashback offers,” further added the report.