Tariff Hike Might Deliver Better Services And Increase GDP: COAI

Amid the tariff war, TRAI has played a major role and now telecom operators have increased the tariff. There is a lot of buzz on the internet about the impact of a tariff hike on subscribers. Now, COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India) has released a note on how this price hike will benefit both the telcos and end-users.

According to ET Now report, COAI said that the revenue generated after the tariff hike will be invested to improve the customer service, network quality, and introduce new technologies.

The report stated Rajan Matthews, Director-Gener of COAI saying that the subscriber has taken benefits of cheap tariffs in the past few years. However, the new traffic hike will not affect the users more because it is still lesser then what users use to pay back in 2010.

COAI has also written a letter to the telecom secretary Anshu Prakash, stating that users will now pay Rs. 11 per GB before the traffic hike it was Rs. 7.7 per GB which still cheaper than earlier scenarios. The letter also includes that back in 2015 subscribers use to pay Rs. 255 for 1Gb data and Rs. 333 in 2010 which was much higher than the current rates.

"We do not find the reported tariff increases to impact affordability negatively, as the majority of present customers were paying well in excess of this amount with substantially less consumption of voice minutes and data," ET report quoted COAI.

According to Rajan Matthews, with the increased plans rates telecom industry will gain revenue which will allow them to hire more employees and offer better services to end-users. He also added that a 10 percent increase in broadband penetration will increase the GDP by 3-4 percent.

Meanwhile, all the telcos have increased their tariff plans and today Vodafone Idea has revamped its plans. On the other side, Reliance Jio is still waiting for December 6 to make changes in the plans.