The telecom industry has seen a lot of bloodbath in the past few months, and the condition of the industry has only stabilised in the last few months. The data tariff hike which was made in the start of December 2019 was one of the major factors behind the stabilisation in the telecom industry which helped the telecom companies in putting a break to the excessive competition and put an end to falling prices and break the trend. Also, as a result of this new data tariff hike, the telecom operators started charging up to 40% more on their prepaid plans. Prior to this, the plans of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, even BSNL were similarly priced, and there was a plan for every price bracket. But, with the new data tariff hike in action such is not the case. The starting price of viable prepaid plans has gone up. Another thing to note is that while Reliance Jio used to have the exact same pricing for its plans, is offering its plans for a little less as compared to Bharti Airtel. Well, there is little reason behind that.
Jio Shipping Cheaper Data Offerings
The interesting thing to note here is that even with the new data tariff hike in application, Reliance Jio’s prepaid plans are available to the customers for around 20% less than the price of the competing offering. Simply put, even though Jio has also implemented a hike on its prepaid plans, its plans are priced a slightly lower than the competing offerings. However, this brings us to the question of why the pricing of Jio plans does not earn it an edge over the other operators. Because it is not as simple. Even though Reliance Jio is the cheapest operator out of all, there is a catch which adds to the situation.
Reliance Jio has put a cap on calling, as to how much a subscriber can call to another number which is on a different network. This means that a call from Jio to Airtel after completion of the initial 1,000 minutes cap in a monthly plan is going to set you back by some small money. But, this does not change the fact that Jio is the cheapest telecom operator for data. This means that if data is your priority and you are not likely to be using calling facility, then Reliance Jio would be the right choice for you.
Airtel Offering Unlimited Calling
For example, take the case of the 84 days validity prepaid plan by Jio, which also comes with 1.5GB data per day. In the Reliance Jio portfolio, this prepaid plan is available for Rs 555, whereas, in the Airtel prepaid portfolio, it is available for Rs 598. Therefore, you can see that there is a Rs 43 difference in the pricing of this prepaid plan. The data offering remains the same, whereas the calling limit only differs. In Reliance Jio, the calling for Jio to Jio customers is unlimited, whereas, in the case of Jio to other networks, there is cap of 3,000 minutes in the entire validity period. In the case of Airtel, however, there is no such cap, and the users can dial as many numbers as they want. Similarly, Jio is currently retailing an offer for Rs 2,020 wherein the subscribers can opt for the yearlong plan for Rs 2,020 which is usually available for around Rs 2,400.
