Mobile services are now as essential as fuel: consumers use huge amounts of data on their smartphones on a daily basis. From video services to the huge popularity of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), these mobile services are essential and are even becoming immune to price hikes.
This is evidenced by the acceptance and negligible impact of last November and December’s price hikes on some of India’s leading telcos: Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
“Mobile services are now considered essential, like fuel, which needs to be refueled regardless of the cost… We got this response even in villages during recent field checks,” Kunal Vora, head of India Equity Research at BNP Paribas, told Economic Times.
BNP estimates that the total number of UPI-based mobile payment transactions will increase by 95% from 2021 to 2022, reaching about $110 billion by February 2022. The number of active subscriptions in the telecommunications sector in general also increased dramatically, from 4.2 million in December 2021 to 5.9 million in January 2022.
According to analysts, the 2021 rate hike for these consumers demonstrates how essential these mobile services are considered to be and shows that the telecommunications industry has regained significant pricing power.
The Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana (UNIB) offers studies related to this topic, such as:
Source: Mobile Services Are Now as Essential as Fuel: Analysts
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