Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel recently announced new prepaid plans. The interesting thing about these plans was their nature of allowing users to consume data without any daily limits. But there’s also one thing that many might have missed out on. It is that how expensive each GB of data is being offered to the users with the plans. This may have been an indirect signal from the telcos about the possibly coming tariff hikes. Let’s take a look at how these new plans are charging more money for each GB of data from the users.
Reliance Jio Has Brought Expensive Plans to the Market
While Jio has launched five plans, Airtel has only launched one plan. To understand how much more Jio is charging from the customers, let us pick two of its plans, one from the old offerings and one from the newly launched. For comparison, we are taking the old Rs 2,399 plan and the new Rs 2,397 plans from Reliance Jio. Both the plans come with 365 days of validity, unlimited calling, 100 SMS/day, and complimentary Jio app benefits. The only difference between both the plans is their data benefits. The Rs 2,399 plan offers users 2GB of daily data, while the Rs 2,397 plan offers users a total of 365GB of data without any daily usage limits. So with the Rs 2,399 plan, users get 730GB of total data, while with the Rs 2,397 plan, users get half of it, which is 365GB. Thus, each GB of data with the Rs 2,399 plan is offered to the user for Rs 3.28. In comparison, with the Rs 2,397 plan, users get each GB of data at the cost of Rs 6.56, which almost twice as expensive.
Bharti Airtel’s Plan Also Expensive
Coming to Bharti Airtel, the telco launched a new plan of Rs 456 yesterday. We will be comparing it with the telco’s old offering of Rs 449. Both the Rs 456 and the Rs 449 plans from the telco comes with truly unlimited voice calling, OTT benefits, Airtel Thanks benefits, and 100 SMS/day. The only difference between the plans is their validity and data benefits. Even with validity, the difference is minor as the Rs 456 plan comes for 60 days while the Rs 449 plan comes for 56 days. With the Rs 456 plan, users get a total of 50GB of data without any daily usage limit for 60 days, and with the Rs 449 plan, users get 2GB of daily data for 56 days, meaning a total of 112GB of data. So with the Rs 449 plan, users get each GB of data for approximately Rs 4, while with the Rs 456 plan, the cost of each GB of data rises to Rs 9.12. This is a significant jump in the cost of each data. Now, these new plans could mean two things. One, these are just different natured plans which do not come with any daily data consumption limits, and that is why they are expensive. Second, these plans portray the price hikes that the telecom industry is soon going to see.
