Vodafone Idea launches new yearly prepaid tariff plan to with lucrative data and calling benefits in India.
In their bid consolidate their market share after the emergence of Reliance Jio, Vodafone merged with Idea Cellular to become one entity Vodafone Idea Ltd, India's largest network provider in 2018. Later in the year, the company removed several low tariff prepaid plans as the Average Revenue per User (ARP) wasn't enough to break even and still wasn't helping it to stop subscriber attrition.
It was a big risk, as it would lead to large scale migration. Even rival Airtel too has made similar moves in early January 2019, both the company believes that the better services and value-added entertainment subscription would draw new smartphone owners.
In that order, Vodafone has introduced Rs 1499 plan. With this, the subscribers get 1GB/day totalling 365 GB/year, unlimited calls (local and national), zero roaming charges, 100 SMS/day in addition to the company's entertainment package Vodafone Play for one full year (365 days).
If we break it down, customers will be paying Rs 125 per month, which is the same as 80-90 days plan that cost anywhere between Rs 398 and Rs 499. One advantage is that you have to pay only once a year and you won't receive pesky remainder SMS about impending closure of the tariff plan.
So, how does it compare to the emerging player Reliance Jio, which also offer similar to the Rs 1699. It is Rs 200 costlier than the Vodafone Idea plan, but the data benefits per day are more. With this, consumers are entitled to get 1.5GB/day (equivalent to 547.5GB per year), truly unlimited voice calling (no ceiling on call minutes per day), 100 SMS/day, access to Jio suite of apps including JioCinema, JioSaavn Music and more.
Both Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio have good prepaid services for the consumers in India and have chances to increase their subscriber base in coming days, but Airtel looks trailing in this aspect. The latter has no such yearly prepaid plan just yet and should not waste time, as it will tough time to convince existing prepaid customers to stay or even attract new consumers for that matter.
