As Indian mobile operators launch a series of free voice calling plans, the real gainer is the Indian consumer who has been paying for voice calls—both local and long-distance—ever since the British set up telephone exchanges in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1882.
Now that has changed. As telecom operators battle for the data consumer, first Bharti Airtel and now Reliance Jio offer free voice calling. That could be an issue for Airtel—data accounts for just 23.7% of their revenues now. Now even though Airtel has only a few plans that offer free voice, Reliance Jio does not charge for voice per se.
That’s something incumbent operators—Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular—will have to accept as the new normal. It’s early days, but it could hurt revenues in the immediate future. Bharti Airtel started by offering free calling on an upfront payment of R1,199 along with 1GB of data.
Jio has lowered that benchmark to R499, but is also offering 4GB of data. As all operators over time offer free voice, what remains to be seen is whether the data upsurge that operators expect will happen or not. Free voice and low tariffs could hit operations of smaller service providers.
But for data to pick up, the network coverage has to improve sharply as much of the rise in data will be driven by music, video and movie downloads by the youth. All said, it is achhe din for the Indian mobile consumer.