Good news for Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea prepaid customers! Both the Telecom operators have announced shipping free outgoing calls under new plans that came live on December 3.
The announcement of the data tariff hike was quite shocking for the subscribers. But customers were not aware that data tariff hike would bring slight changes to their plans as well which resulted in an increase in data price and calling to other networks was also capped. This made subscribers bound to call for a few free minutes. For example, in the case of 28 days plan, 1000 free minutes were given to users which will force the users to get recharge done after the allowed minutes will be over. But the new announcement will help users to enjoy unlimited calling like before.
Initially, the free outgoing calls to other networks were for 1000 minutes in a plan with 28-days validity, 3,000 minutes in 84-days validity and 12,000 in 365 days validity prepaid plan. After this, the customers had to pay 6 paisa per minute.
“We heard you! And we are making the change. From tomorrow, enjoy unlimited calling to any network in India with all our unlimited plans. No conditions apply,” Bharti Airtel said in a tweet.
 The same day Reliance Jio increased the calling and internet plans by 40%. It also said that some plans are 15-20% cheaper than others and there is no change in the free call limit to other networks till Saturday evening.
Airtel and Vodafone Idea announced new plans on 1st December that says that the charges of calls and internet by up to 50% for its prepaid customers and will be effective from December 3.
Both the companies announced new plans that include unlimited calls and internet with 2 days, 28 days, 84 days and 365 days validity which in actual cost more than 50%.
Bharti Airtel increased its initial level unlimited plan with a year-long validity by about 50% to Rs 1,499 with 24 GB data of data in place of Rs 998 plan with 12 GB data usage limit. In the 365 days plan 1.5 GB per day and will now cots 41.2 percent more at Rs 2,398 compared to Rs 1,699 plan.
The plan of Vodafone’s idea was higher by Re 1 compared to that of Airtel. The three other plans announced by the company are Rs 219 with 28 days validity offering 1 GB per day, Rs 399 with 56daya validity offering 1.5 GB and Rs 449 plan with 56 days validity offering 2 GB data usage, respectively.
Airtel’s new plan of Rs 399 with 56 days validity is cheaper than that of Reliance Jio plan at the same price.The plan of Rs 219 has been introduced by Vodafone similar to that of Bharti Airtel.
Bharti Airtel has posted a net loss of Rs 23,045 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. The loss was due to provisioning of Rs 28,450 crore by Supreme court ruling on Statutory dues.
Liabilities of Bharti Airtel according to the government data are around 35,586 crores, of which Rs 21,682 crore is license fee and another Rs 13,904.01 crore is the SUC dues (excluding the dues of Telenor and Tata Teleservices).
The government is neither considering any waver on penalties nor interest on outstanding licensing fees based on adjusted gross revenue (AGR). Also, there is no news on extending the timelines for telecom companies to pay on their statutory dues.