Airtel and Hutch hike local rates by 20 paise

It looks like the party for mobile users who were enjoying one of the cheapest tariff in the world is over. The country’s two top mobile operators Airtel and Hutch on Monday increased the local charges within their own network to Rs 1.20 per minute for prepaid customers from Re 1 a minute. This comes days after both the operators had hiked their STD tariff rates.
Other operators like Idea, MTNL, BSNL, Reliance and Tata could raise local rates following the move by Hutch and Airtel. The new tariff will be for prepaid customers for Airtel-to-Airtel and Hutch-to-Hutch calls. The two operators have also increased local SMS rates to Rs 1.20 per message for all users — both prepaid and postpaid — from Re 1 earlier.
Last week Hutch had raised STD rates by 10.41 per cent for its pre-paid users and Airtel had hiked STD charges by 32 per cent for both pre-paid and post paid customers. Prepaid users of Hutch will have to pay Rs 2.65 from Rs 2.40 previously for STD to all other networks and Bharti Airtel’s prepaid and postpaid mobile customers in Delhi region would pay STD rates of Rs 2.65 and Rs 2.40 a minute respectively from Rs 2 earlier.
According to analysts there is pressure on operators to revive their bottom line as revenues from value-added services are not bringing expected returns. Also with the subscriber base increasing, it is difficult to maintain networks to support huge additions of new users without raising tariffs.