There was a simpler time for India’s telecom space. I’m old enough to remember an era when we had as many as 12 players, across GSM and CDMA technologies. Pricing wars were an obvious result when market contours are like this. Times have changed. The select telcos that remain now focus on increasing average revenue per user. Your postpaid bills and prepaid recharge costs are rising. There are many ways to go about this, and a sophisticated illustration of the last twelve months makes it clear, that telcos are trying it all. Bundling subscriptions, a pitch of value added services and network level features they hope will stem user churn (portability means there is little consumer loyalty, and in a way, rightly so).
I’ll specifically note the headroom that tariff pricing changes give to telecom companies. Reliance Jio, for instance, is referring to something called “premium 5G”. In an earnings call last week, Anshuman Thakur, who is head of strategy at Reliance Jio Infocomm said, “On the product side, the 5G premium services with our stack, we can offer. Now, some of this is being done on a trial basis. We need to ensure that we are fully regulatory compliant, but these products are ready for the market.”