Idea : Hikes Monthly Rental Plans Of Post-Paid Subscribers By Rs. 50

From June on-wards Idea Cellular has hiked the monthly rentals of its post-paid customers by Rs. 50.

Head of Service Delivery, Mumbai Operations, Amit Dimri said, "Effective from the June bill cycle, the monthly rental will have a nominal increase of Rs. 50 per month."

He said it in an email to post-paid customers, who constitute just 4 percent of its 137.9 million subscribers as of end March.

However, Idea's Chief Marketing Officer Sashi Shanker told PTI that the company keeps changing its tariff/ call rates and rentals. Meanwhile he was mum about the hike in the rentals is only for the Mumbai circle or across the circles.

However, Idea operates across the nation with presence in all the 22 circles.

At the same time Bharti, Airtel and Vodafone had scaled down discount offers and the telecom operators have been hiking rates on a regular basis. Airtel had reduced benefits for certain mobile Internet schemes too and Vodafone had also reduced validity on its promotional packs.

Telecom operators were blaming tariff hike on high outgo on spectrum auctions in the recently held auctions, wherein they had to shell out Rs. 61,000 crores in bid for 2G spectrum. But in the March, Idea had reported a 91 percent rise in net income to Rs. 590 crores on healthy growth in call and data volume and an increase of 8.3 percent in its average revenue per user.

However, the company saw a 2.8 percent decline in average revenue per minute (ARPM) to 43.6 paise from 44.9 paise a year ago and the total consolidated revenue in the fourth quarter rose 16.2 percent to Rs. 7,043.8 crores from Rs. 6,061.4 crores a year. Consolidated revenue for the full fiscal grew 18 percent to Rs. 26,518.9 crores