Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) must focus on the quality of service (QoS) they are offering to the users after multiple tariff hikes. There’s no doubt that there’s going to be another round of prepaid tariff hikes later in 2022. The private telcos are changing the market dynamics by hiking tariffs. The more the prices go up, the more it becomes about premium and quality. But the question is, will the Indian telcos be able to live up to the expectations of the consumers? With lower tariffs, the thing that people focused on was who offered the most affordable plans. But with higher tariffs, for most, it would become about who offers the best services. As a consumer, you wouldn’t want to spend money on a plan with a telecom operator that can’t really serve your network connections needs well. The problem with the Indian market is that there are a lot of low paying customers, and there are very few telecom operators. Because of India’s population, even the telco, which doesn’t have 4G yet, has over more than 50 million active subscribers. Companies such as Jio and Airtel have more than 400 million and 350 million subscribers.
Network Congestion a Real Problem With 4G in India
Network congestion is a real problem for people in India. There are millions of users and very few operators to fulfil their demand. In most areas of the country, there’s not enough network capacity to handle the data load demand generated during peak hours. If this keeps happening even after the tariff hikes, it would mean that the consumers are paying more money for the same congested networks that they used to get for less money. With 5G, the network capacity won’t be an issue, but not every consumer is going to switch to 5G services, and even the telcos are expected to take their sweet time to reach every corner of the country with 5G networks. 4G networks can’t handle the load the Indian consumers demand at peak hours. However, it is worth noting that compared to two or three years back, in 2022, the performance of the 4G networks on an average basis has improved. But there’s still a long way to go for people to be able to completely rely on 4G networks for anything they do on their smartphones, laptops, and more. The telco that will be able to offer the best and most premium services will be the winner in the era of tariff hikes.
