Reliance Jio and Airtel price hike – new plans and how you can save money | Business Insider India (2024)

• Reliance Jio has announced a price hike of up to 25% for its prepaid and postpaid plans.
• Bharti Airtel has also announced a price hike of up to 21% for its plans.
• Here are the new plans from the two telcos and how you can save some money.

Reliance Jio on Thursday announced a price hike, increasing the prices of its plans by up to 25%. Following in the footsteps of the Mukesh Ambani-led telco, Bharti Airtel announced a price hike on Friday.

The price hike has been expected for a few months now, with reports indicating that telecom operators may hike the price by up to 17% after the Lok Sabha elections.

The telcos have gone on to hike the prices more than expected, with Jio increasing the prices by up to 25% and Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel has increased the prices of its plans by up to 21%.

Reliance Jio price hike – new plans

Jio has announced new plans, increasing the prices of its popular plans by up to 25%. The company’s popular ₹666 plan which offers 84 days of validity and 1.5GB data per day will now be available for ₹799. It ₹2,999 plan that offers 365 days of validity will be available for ₹3,599, an increase of ₹600.

The new prices will be applicable from July 3. Jio has also hiked the prices of its postpaid plans in line with the prepaid plans.

“The introduction of new plans is a step in the direction of furthering industry innovation and driving sustainable growth through investments in 5G and AI technology,” Reliance Jio said in a statement.

Jio restricts unlimited 5G benefits to selected plans

Apart from the increase in prices, Jio has also made some changes to its unlimited 5G offer. With the new plans, the unlimited 5G benefit will only be given with plans that offer 2GB of data per day.

The revised plans that offer this benefit include ₹349 (28 days), ₹533 (56 days), ₹859 (84 days) and ₹3,599 (365 days).

Airtel follows suit, announces a price hike

Just a day after Jio announced a price hike, Airtel followed its footsteps to announce increased tariffs.

Like Jio, Airtel’s new plans will be applicable from July 3.

How to save money

As both Jio and Airtel have announced that the price hike will be applicable from July 3, you still have some time to recharge now and save some money.

With the price increase being around 20% for a lot of plans, it does make sense for you to recharge multiple plans now to save some money later.

Both Jio and Airtel allow you to queue plans. These plans get activated once your existing plan expires.

All you have to do is recharge with your preferred plan and this will get automatically activated once your existing plan expires. You do not have to do anything else after this.

"The latest round of tariff hikes wherein the telcos increased the prepaid tariffs by around 15-20% will provide the traction in the ARPU levels and can result in additional operating profits of around Rs. 20,000 crore for the industry once these hikes are fully absorbed. This will result in increased profit generation, thereby providing headroom for the industry to undertake deleveraging as well as fund capex for the technology upgrade as well as network expansion. ICRA expects the industry revenues to grow by 12-14% in FY2025, which given the operating leverage, is likely to translate into healthy expansion in operating profits by 14-16%. This, in turn is likely to result in improvement in industry ROCE to more than 10% for FY2025," says Ankit Jain, Vice President and Sector Head of Corporate Ratings, ICRA Limited.

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