Indian telecom service provider Bharti Airtel announced 12 percent increase in its postpaid monthly charges from December in the Delhi NCR region.

It’s not known whether Airtel’s main rivals such as Aircel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications, MTNL, Uninor, MTS, Tata Docomo, etc. will follow suit.

Indications are that Airtel will increase postpaid tariffs in other telecom circle as well in phases. The telecom operator earlier warned that if the Union government accepts the spectrum auction price suggested by TRAI, the industry will be forced to increase cellular tariffs.

The telecom operator has already benefitted from its recent increase in data tariffs. Announcing the second quarter revenue for fiscal 2014-2015, Bharti Airtel said its India revenues increased 12.3 percent, fuelled by 11.3 percent increase in mobile, 14.4 percent in Telemedia and 23.5 percent in Digital TV.

ALSO READ: Airtel Capex up 81% to $616 mn, Q2 revenue up 11% to $3.7 bn

Airtel said mobile voice realization in India has improved by 0.90p to 37.69p per minute. Mobile data revenue increased 73.8 percent to Rs 1,805 crore. Airtel data customer base rose 43 percent in the second quarter. Mobile data revenues contribute to 14.5 percent of mobile India revenues against 9.4 percent one-year earlier period.

The increase in postpaid tariffs indicates that Airtel will continue to perform well financially and will invest in Capex plans. The development also shows the impact of hyper competition is reducing in the Indian telecom industry.

Effective December 3 2014, bill plan rental for Airtel mobile will be revised from Rs 199 per month to Rs 224 per month, Airtel said in a message to its customers.

Airtel has increased rates across low rental plans, said a report in Times of India.

Airtel spokesperson told PTI: “There is only a marginal revision in the monthly rentals of few of our postpaid plans in Delhi-NCR with no change in the plan benefits. We continue to offer excellent value proposition to customers.”

The Sunil Mittal promoted Airtel has a mobile subscriber base of over 20 crore customers, which include both prepaid and postpaid users.

This is the second increase in rates of telecom services by Bharti Airtel in the last three months. In September, the company had increased mobile internet rates by up to 33 percent and reduced benefit under plans for its prepaid customers.

Baburajan K
[email protected]