Vodafone Idea (Vi) is echoing the words of its competition, Bharti Airtel. Both telecom operators have said that users who use more should pay more. The unlimited data offer has become a bottleneck for telecom players to be able to earn more from users who are consuming more.
At the earnings call for Q4 FY24, Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), said, "tariff rationalisation on the high usage plans and moving to a price structure of paying more for using more remains critical to ensure that the operators make reasonable returns on their large network and spectrum investments."
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The price that a consumer should pay for their mobile plan should be based on the level of consumption. Talking about the tariff hikes, he said that the entry-level plans won't see a higher degree of change. It will be the plans through which users are consuming more that will see a bigger change. Indian consumers enjoy mobile data at one of the most affordable rates globally. Due to that, telecom operators can't make healthy returns on their investments, which are huge as it takes a lot of money to build and set up infrastructure, use modern technology, and pay regulatory fees.
On SIM consolidation, he said that users are not going to necessarily stop consuming mobile services, it will be the second SIM or multiple SIM users that will stop or more of their SIM cards.
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Despite having tariffs at the level of Bharti Airtel's, Vodafone Idea Limited has not been able to grow its ARPU (average revenue per user) substantially to the level of its competitors, largely due to having a large number of legacy network users. Further, the telco's 4G subscriber addition pace has been too slow to make any meaningful impact on its ARPU.
