ISPs to click on steep price hike

Prachi Verma in New Delhi

Soon netizens will have to shell out double the amount for a trip into cyberspace. As the Internet service provider (ISP) market seems to be moving towards a 50 per cent price hike in another six months.
The price hike will be led by none other than Bharti’s ISP —- Mantraonline, that is decided on a 50 per cent price hike across all its packages in the next six months.

“We will increase prices across all our ISP packages in another six months by 50 per cent. This will be done in a phased manner and for the next month we will increase the prices of all the packages by 15 per cent,” Bharti Broadband Networks Limited CEO Ashok Juneja said.
Another ISP bullish on a price jump is NOW-India (Data Access India’s ISP offering). It is also increasing the prices of its introductory packages presently priced at Rs 6.60 per hour to Rs 10 per hour in the next two months time frame.

“We will be raising prices of our introductory packages by over 50 per cent (from Rs 6.60 to Rs 10 per hour). In the meanwhile, if other ISP players increase prices before we do, it will only make our job simpler,” Data Access India executive vice president-marketing and sales Rajiv Jaitely said.

He pointed out that the company will be increasing the prices of other ISP packages as well, depending on the market moves.
Other ISPs like HCLInfinet and DishnetDSL have decided to follow the first mover. HCLInfinet which has hiked its prices by 12 per cent in the last one year, intends to lie back and watch the market moving towards a price rise.

“Value-added services targeting corporates are the prime focus for HCLInfinet and therefore we can afford to wait and watch the dial-up market, even though we all are losing money. However, we will raise dial-up prices once the market makes such a move,” HCLInfinet CEO Saurav Adhikari explained.

DishnetDSL which claims a subscriber base of 2.5 lakh, is mulling over launching new ISP packages.

“We are also considering a price rationalisation which will be dependent on how the other players move. If there are players going in for a price hike, DishnetDSL will also go in for a price rationalisation,” company’s senior official remarked.