The Change Wave
One thing that the telecom industry relieved people from was to pay for the incoming calls, but that soon may be a thing of past. Yes, you read that write, telecom companies are all set to start charging people for incoming calls. The result of the vast change that the industry has gone through in the past few years, wherein the call rates and data became cheaper than ever. The entry of Jio is responsible for this to a large extent. Jio made voice calls free and the users had to pay only for data, this left other telecom companies with hardly any choice and soon everyone started following the suit. For consumers, it surely is one of the best times and they are hugely benefitted from the low prices, but for the telecom companies, earnings became difficult than ever and now it’s the question of sustenance.
Revenue Crisis
The revenue crisis in the telecom sector is so severe that it has even led to individual giants like Vodafone and Idea merge together. They are all finding ways to scale up their Average Revenue Per User and add something to their kitties.
The New Plans
Some companies have already launched plans with a minimum recharge, which could be as low as Rs 35 with a validity of 28 days. Airtel has launched 3 such recharge plans for Rs 35, Rs 65 and Rs 95. The Rs 35 plan comes with a talk time worth Rs 26, 100 MB data and is valid of 28 days. This plan would then renew the user’s incoming call facility.
The Effect
A lot many people will be affected by this new development, especially those who live in the rural parts of the country. These users hardly recharge their phones and some keep them solely for the incoming calls purpose. Even when they do recharge, they top it up with just Rs 10 in order to keep the phone working. These prices have led to very low ARPUs for the telecom players and hence this decision.
How this new development will be accepted and taken by the people is yet to be seen, because it’s been long that people are used to their incoming being free and this sudden change is unexpected and uncalled for
