Reliance industries have been in the news for the past 3 days, and specifically, telecom shares have been the performers, rising as much as 5% in the past 3 days. In a circular filed with the exchange, Reliance announced that Jio will hike tariffs ranging from 12% to 25% on its prepaid and postpaid plans, starting from July 3. The decision to hike rate is expected to boost average revenue per user (ARPU), which had stagnated around Rs. 180 for three quarters until March 2024. Following Jio rate hike, Bharti Airtel also announced a price hike across all its prepaid and postpaid plans and in no time we might see Vodafone Idea falling in line.

In 2016, when Mukesh Ambani launched Jio with a unique strategy of proving free voice calls and the world's cheapest data rates. The move that time forced many competitors either to close their shops (Aircel, Tata) or slash their prices, leading to a seismic shift in the industry. Later in 2019, Jio initiated the processor hiking rate by 20–40%. After that, a major industry-wide tariff hike was led by Bharti Airtel, with average prices had gone up by 20%. As of April-end, Jio had a 40.48% share of wireless subscribers in India, and as many as 472.42 million of the 1.16 billion total mobile phone connections in the country run on the Jio network.

The move is aimed at boosting average revenue per user (ARPU). Telecom companies have long advocated for tariff increases as essential for sustainable growth. The Sunil Mittal-led telco has repeatedly reiterated the need to increase the current ARPU from Rs 200 to Rs 300, given that India remains among the cheapest in the world.

The new tariff table and the percentage increase compared to the old tariffs are shown below. The most active plan saw the sharpest hike, with 28 days of validity and 1.5 GB of data per day. Another popular plan, which came with a validity of 84 days, saw an increase of 20% from ₹799.

Jio also introduced new services, including JioSafe, a quantum-secure communication app for calling, messaging, file transfer, and more (priced at ₹199 per month), and JioTranslate, an AI-powered multi-lingual communication app for translating voice calls, voice messages, text, and images (priced at ₹99 per month).