Currently, the subscribers in the telecom industry are looking forward towards a massive tariff hike in the sector. The people who have not yet recharged their numbers with the long-term prepaid plans and who will have expired plans in their accounts in a few days will have to pay around 40% more for the same plans in some cases. The two major telecom operators who have made a move include Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. These two telcos have revamped their prepaid plans starting Tuesday this week, and now the subscribers can see these new prepaid plans on the respective websites of these telecom operators. But, with this new change there again comes the question in the minds of the subscribers, about which one of the two is, is faring better in terms of benefits and which one will be worthy of the price tag? So, we take a thorough look at some of the most popular plans and see which one the subscriber should go for - Vodafone or Bharti Airtel.
Popular Plans and Changes After Tariff Hike
One of the most notable plans in the industry was the Rs 199 prepaid plan from both the telcos, which has now been increased by around 25% to cost almost Rs 250. Vodafone is retailing this plan for Rs 249, whereas Bharti Airtel is shipping this prepaid plan for Rs 248. When it comes to data benefits, both of these plans offer the same benefit of 1.5GB data per day to the subscribers along with 100 SMS per day. However, when it comes to calling, both of the telcos have made a similar change to their plans, and in a way, now these plans are also charging the IUC from their customers.
Next in line of some popular plans is the Rs 599 prepaid plan, which Airtel is shipping for Rs 598. This plan also offers 1.5GB data per day to the subscribers, but it comes with 84 days validity and 100 SMS per day offering as well. The Airtel plan offers more additional benefits to the subscribers since it offers Rs 150 Cashback on FASTag, Airtel Xstream Premium subscription, four weeks course on Shaw Academy and Wynk Music.
Calling Cap on Prepaid Plans
Talking about the calling on both of these telecom operators, the subscribers are going to see a cap of 1000 minutes on plans with 28 days validity and a cap of 3000 minutes on plans with 84 days validity. Past this limit, if the subscribers want to call numbers which are not on their network, then they would be charged 6 paise per minute. To recall, Reliance Jio, a while ago had started charging 6 paise per minute IUC on calls to other networks. Thus, with this new change, we can see that the telcos have all come back to square one.
Best Out of Two for Calling to Other Networks
Summing up, we can say that both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel are shipping exact same benefits for the price point, but the additional offerings in the case of Bharti Airtel might be luring for the subscribers. However, taking a look at the Airtel portfolio, we find that Bharti Airtel has talk time options which go as high as Rs 5,000, whereas the maximum talk time plan option with Vodafone is Rs 100. This means that Airtel subscribers can opt for a heavy talk time plan and forget recharging for a long time if they make a lot of outgoing calls to other networks. The Rs 100 talk time plan ships Rs 81.75 talk time, for both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. The Rs 1,000 talk time plan offers talk time of Rs 847.46
