Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) need to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), said a global telecom body, GSMA. The ARPU needs to go up and match the scale of investments that the telecom operators are making, said Vivek Badrinath, Director General, GSMA. The ARPU of the Indian telcos, compared to the global standards is low. However, the telcos have seen a constant uptick in ARPU over the last five to six years owing to the tariff hikes and a higher data consumption by the consumers.
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Airtel and Jio are even reporting increasing revenues and higher profits every quarter that goes by. Even though Vodafone Idea is struggling business wise, its ARPU has also gone up. GSMA is a global body that represents more than 700 telecom service providers (globally), and including the private telecom operators in India.
The Indian telecom operators have to be sensitive to price as the market and the consumers are very price sensitive and the competition is very tight. The state-run telecom operators in India, BSNL and MTNL, arguably have the lowest ARPU in the world, said an ET report. The telecom industry's ARPU for the prepaid services stood at Rs 187 and postpaid services stood at Rs 182.72, respectively, as per TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report for quarter ending June 2025.
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Maximum customers in India use prepaid services. The postpaid services are expensive, and thus, only a marginal section of the society can afford it. But over the years, even the prepaid services have become quite expensive. The market leader, Reliance Jio, recently confirmed that while the market estimates a tariff hike in the near future, it doesn't have any plans to do so.
