Reliance Communications hikes mobile call rates by at least 20 percent

Reliance Communications Monday raised mobile call rates by 20-30 percent across India, a company statement said.

�"We have now corrected all commitment plans across the country and have increased tariffs by between 20 percent and 30 percent,�" Gurdeep Singh, chief executive officer, Wireless, Reliance Communications, said.

�"Our headline tariff increase from 1.2 to 1.5 paise per second in October last year did not see any traffic elasticity and there has been no fall in customer demand or change in usage patterns, as we successfully migrated our entire base to the headline tariff.�"

The company cut its promotional and concessional offers by as much as 65 percent as well.

The statement said the Indian telecom industry was now heading for a phase of consolidation, with smaller operators shutting down or scaling down their operations and easing off hyper-competitive pressures. This will help pricing power move back to serious, long-term and pan-India scale operators and positively impact profitability.

The company has a customer base of about 130 million, including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers.