Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm’s GBrich ‘Prime’ offerings may have galvanised the top three telecom operators to unleash equally aggressive counter-offers to prevent customer churn.
Airtel has nearly matched Jio’s Rs 303/month Prime offer with a Rs 345/month variant targeted at prepaid users that dishes out an identical 28 GB of 4G data over a month (with a 1 GB daily usage cap) along with unlimited voice calls to all networks.
No 2 carrier Vodafone India has similarly unveiled plans in the Rs 342-346 per month range (depending on a circle) that gives prepaid customers 28 GB with unlimited calls. But Vodafone prepaid customers need to sign up by March 15 to get continued benefits of the plan for an undefined period. Vodafone has not specified the closure date of the plan.
Third-largest carrier Idea, too, has countered Jio Prime by unveiling a Rs 348 bundled plan, offering 14 GB of data over 28 days with unlimited voice calling.
Analysts and experts warned the offers would be ARPU dilutive as they try to protect turf against a formidable adversary like Jio that has set its sights on cornering half of India’s mobile revenue market share (RMS) and operating margins of 50%.
