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The move comes a day after Bharti Airtel’s MD Gopal Vittal said the telco can benefit from Vodafone Idea’s continuing financial challenges and further grow its market share, particularly in the postpaid segment, leveraging 5G services to disproportionately win customers.
Experts however believe the move may not be sufficient to arrest the customer churn on its network as telcos with live 5G service will be aggressive in attracting customers from the cash-strapped telecom operator.
“By strengthening our postpaid portfolio with Vi Max, we aim to attract the high ARPU postpaid users to the 5G ready Vi network offering them more power, value and convenience,” said Avneesh Khosla<\/a>, CMO, Vodafone Idea Limited.
Vittal Tuesday said that given the financially pressed situation that one of the players (read: Vodafone Idea) in the industry is going through, the moment is ripe for Airtel to pull ahead and take a further lead, particularly in the postpaid segment. Airtel and Vodafone Idea both have approximately 20 million postpaid subscribers.
“Airtel and Vodafone’s recent focus on postpaid indicates that they want to protect their high-end (postpaid) customers from churning to Jio, as the latter has a better spectrum portfolio and also plans to offer 5G standalone network,” according to Ashwinder Sethi, principal analyst at Analysys Mason. He added that these subscribers contribute 12-15% revenue to the two telcos.
Vodafone Idea’s Vi Max plans are priced at Rs 401, Rs 501, and Rs 701. It also rolled out a RedX plan at Rs 1,101. These are now available pan-India, according to a statement by the telco.