Last year, Jio increased the tariff by 25%, Bharti Airtel increased it by 21% and following the path of these telecom companies, Vi also announced its tariff hikes for the subscribers. Well, these price hikes did affect a lot of subscribers, and while they were slowly accepting the increase, there is yet another report of an increase in mobile tariffs this year.
According to a report by The Economic Times, industry executives and analysts said that there is a rise in active subscribers in May 2025, which has stimulated telecom operators in India to consider another tariff hike. It is said that mobile tariffs in India are expected to increase by 10-12% by the end of 2025, especially for mid and higher paying consumers. Differentiated pricing could be based on data usage, data speeds, or specific timings of high data usage, or even for users who consume very little data.
As per experts, the next round of tariff hikes could also see the introduction of tiered pricing where data allowances are reduced drastically to incentivise purchasing of more data packs.
The report highlights that May saw a 29-month record surge of 7.4 million active users to nearly 1.08 billion. It marked the fifth straight month of growth in net user additions. Reliance Jio added 5.5 million active subscribers in May, increasing its active user base by 150 bps to 53% while Bharti Airtel added 1.3 million active subscribers, ending the month with a 36% share of active subscribers.
It is said by an industry executive that this growth in subscribers is due to the general acceptance of past tariff hikes and the need for secondary SIM’s returned to the system.
Talking about the telecom market, BNP Paribas mentioned that the Indian telecom industry’s revenue growth is expected to remain in double digits over FY25-27. And according to brokerage Jefferies, Vodafone Idea’s continued user losses may drive further market share gains for Airtel and Jio.
