When Vidha Shukla, a resident of Delhi and a postpaid customer of Vodafone, found a sudden 45 per cent jump in her bill, she was quite shocked. A quick word with the call centre executive revealed that the company had hiked tariffs by 20 per cent in January.
But she is still unable to understand the rest 25 per cent increase. “My monthly mobile cost used to be Rs 1,000, it is suddenly up to Rs 1,450 even though I make my official calls from my office landline all the time,” says Shukla, conceding that probably she would be make some more calls in January.
Telecom companies, which were cutting rates as they were on a customer acquisition mode, are looking at increasing tariffs. Crisil in a recent report said, “With the number of operators likely to reduce (due to the Supreme Court scrapping of 122 licences), incumbent operators will be in a better position to hike tariffs. Moreover, operators who acquire licenses under the new process are likely to raise tariffs to cover the higher license fees.”
In fact, some have started the process from last year itself. For instance, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications had all increased rates last year. India added 400 million users in the last two years, but revenues crawled 10 per cent, and average minutes of usage per customer fell from 465 in 2007 to 350.
And Vodafone’s recent traiff hikes will only add to costs further. Postpaid subscribers who opted for per second plan will now have to pay 1.5 paisa per second (90p/min) for local calls to any other network’s phone in Delhi and STD calls to Landline phone anywhere in India.
Customers, as a result, should gear up for higher expenses. There are options though: A postpaid customer, if the tariff hike leads to a surge in your mobile bill, can consider switching to prepaid services. The nature of the card – prepaid – will ensure that there is some restriction on the talk time.
Rikesh Parikh, VP-marketing strategy, Prabhudas Liladher suggests that as per one’s usage he can choose a scheme that suits you. “If you use a text a lot then look for schemes that cater to that or if you are used to bulk calling look for schemes with attractive calling rates”, he says.
So what if you are a Vodafone customer who sends a lot of text messages, but Airtel has better schemes for messaging purposes? Make use of the number portability service. With competition likely to increase amongst the telecomm operators, you will see competitive schemes between service providers. So compare the options that you have and choose a scheme that best suits your needs.
Or one can do what Shukla is planning on doing. She has a Blackberry, which means she has options such as a blackberry messenger (bbm) and whatsapp. These applications which allow you to instant message contacts on your phone list just by monthly internet charges. “I won’t switch service providers or even move to being a prepaid user. Instead, I will maybe bbm or whatsapp people more from now on”, she says.
Also get rid of unnecessary value added services which you applied for such as a caller tune and so on.
