For moderate Pre-paid users, Rs 999 recharge hits the sweet spot

The tariff war that started with the entry of Reliance Jio (RJio) in the telecom sector is causing mobile operators to introduce new plans to retain the existing customers and also aggressively enrol new ones.

Some days ago, Airtel announced an offer for its pre-paid 4G users, under which the subscriber can access unlimited data for 90 days with a one-time recharge of Rs 1,495. Vodafone has started offering 10GB data at the cost of just 1GB for customers who have not used a Vodafone connection in the past six months.

Consumers, who are benefiting from the competition, are satisfied with the steps their existing service provider are taking. According to a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch survey, 94 per cent of users are largely satisfied with their incumbent operator and many of them would keep RJio as a secondary SIM.

We looked at the different data offerings by the top players in the country. The trend clearly shows the more data an individual consumes, the cheaper it gets. But, a recharge of Rs 999, which provides 10GB of data, is a sweet spot for consumers. At this price, the cost of data starts to plateau for most operators. The average cost for each gigabyte of data comes to Rs 100 in this slab.