India's Reliance Communications expects the nation's mobile operators to increase tariffs this year, and has revealed plans to reduce the discount it offers on its own headline rates.
RCom CEO Vinod Sawhny has revealed that the company is looking into narrowing the gap between the company's headline tariffs and the rates offered under its mobile plans, the Economic Times reported.
At present the discount is around 25%, but the operator would like to cut this to below 15%.
At a conference call to discuss RCom's first quarter results, Sawhny said the industry is consolidating and pricing power is finally starting to return to operators.
He said sector regulator TRAI has gone on record as stating it expects average tariffs to increase by around 9% this year. This is welcome news to an industry accustomed to prevailing mobile service rates that are among the lowest in the world.
During the first quarter, RCom's consolidated net profit grew 22% year-on-year to 1.32 billion rupees ($21.7 million). Revenue was largely flat at 53.35 billion rupees, but domestic voice revenue grew 1.5% to 34.29 billion rupees and non-voice revenue increased 4.7% to 10.87 billion rupees.
RCom ended the quarter with 110.1 million total customers – down from 112.1 million in the previous quarter. But the company's active 3G customer base increased from 12 to 13 million.