 "Vodafone hikes rates for Mumbai circle")
Come next bill cycle, Vodafone India's Mumbai subscribers will have to pay as much as 20 per cent more for calls they make to other networks.
In a text communique sent to its subscribers, Vodafone said that they will have to pay 50 paise per minute for off-net calls.
"Effective your net bill cycle any local calls from Vodafone to other mobiles will be charged 50 paise per minute. The rest of the plan benefits remain unchanged," the text said, which was sent to some of its post-paid subscribers, who are mostly on corporate plans.
The network charges as much as 30 paise per minute for calls made within the Vodafone network. A call centre executive said that this standard tariff will be applied to subscribers across the circle. The operator has 7.1 million subscribers in Mumbai, and is also the largest operator of the circle.
"It does not account to a headline change in tariffs. We are not thinking of any such increase right now," said a rival telecom company executive. A Vodafone spokesperson did not respond to queries on the development.
Experts and analysts have said that pricing power is back to the top three operators-Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. This is ever since competitive intensity reduced after challengers like Uninor and Sistema Shyam became fringe players who do not operate across the country. The Supreme Court quashed 122 telecom licences granted in 2008 in early 2012.
At a conference earlier, the managing director of Bharti Airtel, the largest telecom operator Gopal Vittal also said call rates will continue to increase for the next few years.
"We will have to make more investments in infrastructure. Growing mobile internet also requires more investments in (optic) fibre. There is no other way but for rates to go up," he said, without speaking about the extent of increases in rates.