Union telecom minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia recently said that the cost of making a one-minute phone call in 2014 was 50 paise. Today, it has dropped to 3 paise, which is a reduction of 94%. The telecom industry tariffs saw a major restructuring and a dip in costs for consumers when Jio announced free calling and data in the initial days with its SIM cards. Competitors had to follow suit to ensure there customers don't end up leaving their networks for Jio's.
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Scindia said, "There are 90 crore mobile phone subscribers. Today there are 116 crore mobile phone subscribers. If we talk about internet penetration, there were 25 crore subscribers in 2014 and today the number is 97.44 crore."
As per a PTI report, he further said that the cost of 1GB of broadband data was Rs 270 per GB in 2014. Today it is down to Rs 9.70 per GB, meaning a 93% drop in costs. Scindia explained that the telcos increased the cost of the tariffs by 10% to recover the cost of deploying 5G in the country. The telecom players have invested around Rs 4.5 lakh crore in rolling out 5G, and thus, Scindia said that there should be a return on the investment.
