Highlights
- Bharti Airtel reduced the incoming call validity expiry to seven days from the older 15 days
- Vodafone Idea seems to have introduced the same change to its prepaid customers
Bharti Airtel has been making some massive changes again to improve its Average Revenue per User (ARPU) which now seems to be higher than that of Reliance Jio. In its latest move, Airtel has reduced the incoming voice calling validity to seven days from the earlier 15 days. For the unaware, Airtel prepaid users without an active combo plan will not be able to make outgoing voice calls even if they have talk time balance left in their account. This is the same Minimum Recharge scheme introduced by the telco last year. Earlier, if an Airtel prepaid customer fails to recharge a combo plan within 15 days of recharge expiry will not be able to receive incoming voice calls, however, the same has now been reduced to seven days. At the moment, it’s unknown whether Vodafone Idea has implemented this change or not, but some section of TelecomTalk readers commented that the changes are already active on Vodafone Idea as well.
Airtel Forces its Prepaid Customers to Recharge Every Seven Days
Back in October 2018, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea scrapped all the popular talk time recharges and also introduced a new scheme called ‘Minimum Recharge.’ Here’s how the minium recharge scheme works on both Airtel and Vodafone Idea networks: a prepaid customer will have to perform a recharge of Rs 35 every month to make voice calls and also to receive incoming calls. If the customer fails to recharge, the outgoing will be immediately barred after the plan expiry, while incoming voice calling used to get disconnected after 15 days. With this new change, Airtel prepaid customers will not be able to receive any incoming calls right after seven days of plan expiry.
Basically, Airtel is forcing its prepaid users to recharge every month so that the ARPU remains stable. This move from both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea was to tackle the current market scenario where Jio is gaining subscribers on a larger note alongside keeping the profits stable.
However, both Airtel and Vodafone Idea have a large of inactive subscribers which do not generate any revenue for the company. Airtel made its intentions clear that it just wants to focus on the customers who generate revenue for the company. And the results are evident and in front of us. Bharti Airtel’ subscriber base fell down drastically, but on the positive side, the ARPU of the company continues to rise.
Minimum Recharge Plans from Bharti Airtel Detailed
Aforesaid, Bharti Airtel removed talk time plans last year and introduced new prepaid plans called ‘Smart Recharges.’ These Smart Recharge plans from Airtel start at Rs 23 and go all the way up to Rs 245. The Rs 23 pack just extends your account validity by 28 days without providing any talk time benefit. So if you’re recharging with the Rs 23 Smart Recharge, you’ll have to separately recharge talk time plan of Rs 10 or Rs 100 or Rs 500 or Rs 1,000. The Rs 35 Smart Recharge bundles Rs 26.66 talk time and 100MB of data benefit, followed by the Rs 65 pack that ships with 200MB of data and Rs 55 talk time. The Rs 95 Smart Recharge offers a user 500MB of data and full talk time of Rs 95. The Rs 35, Rs 65 and 95 plans come with 28 days validity.
Moving onto the plans which offer better validity, we have the Rs 145 Smart Recharge providing 1GB of data, Rs 145 talk time for 42 days, followed by the Rs 245 plan with 2GB data benefit, Rs 245 talk time and 84 days validity.
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