Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telecom operator, wants to add more high-paying customers to its subscriber pool. The telco’s ultimate goal is to improve the average revenue per user (ARPU) figure. But there are a lot of low-paying prepaid customers subscribed to the telco’s networks. A lot of prepaid users are also still consuming 2G services thus, there’s no scope of earning more out of them in the near future. But the telco already understands how it wants to improve its ARPU in multiple ways. One of those ways is to properly distinguish between its prepaid and postpaid services. Didn’t get it? Keep reading.
Ravinder Takkar Says Vi Can Do a Better Job of Explaining the Advantages of Being a Postpaid Customer
Ravinder Takkar, CEO, Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), said the company is working on something which will help with distinguishing and explaining to customers the benefits of being both a prepaid and a postpaid subscriber. According to a Livemint report, Takkar said that the telco needs to approach this in a slightly different manner than in the past. More postpaid customers will definitely increase the revenues for Vi from mobile services and also help with increasing ARPU. But the thing is, there is a very less percentage of the population that wants to use postpaid services. First of all, postpaid plans are way more expensive than prepaid plans. Today, with the concept of daily data, unlimited voice calling, and 100 SMS/day with almost every prepaid plan, the line between prepaid and postpaid has blurred a little. Most users won’t even want to switch to paying for postpaid services without enough incentives. It is also worth noting that postpaid plans are the only segment which didn’t receive tariff hikes. The telcos will likely be looking to expand their postpaid consumer base while hiking the prepaid tariffs at regular intervals. Hopefully, with 5G, India gets to see new postpaid plans bundled with a lot more benefits to attract users. After the next tariff hike, the gap between the prices of prepaid and postpaid services will reduce further. This might push a few more people to adopt postpaid services soon.
