Indian telecommunications company Bharti Airtel announced that it will resume cutting discounted minutes and is likely to increase tariffs in order to meet rising costs. The announcement was made by the company’s managing director and CEO of India and South Asia, Gopal Vittal.
Vittal said, “I think we will continue to see an opportunity to raise voice realisation through continued cut back of discounted minutes… We will deter to touch headline tariff but at some point there may be some opportunity to raise headline tariffs”. The CEO went on to say that the current levels of voice pricing are not manageable as input costs are increasing.
Vittal also explained that operation costs are increasing with the rising cost of diesel, the cost of spectrum, network cost, the cost of fiber, as well as the cost of rolling out networks, due to which the company does not have any other option but to reduce discounted minutes. In recent times, Airtel increased rates of mobile services of internet as well as voice calls under particular schemes.
In the past few quarters, it has been noticed that Airtel was constantly cutting down discounts and freebies in an attempt to increase voice realization and improve the company’s profitability. The CEO went on to say that voice realization per minute has already improved due to efforts of the company.
Photo Credits: Intoday
