Although since Reliance Jio forayed into the industry, most users have shifted to using combo packs — either from Jio or from the other two telcos. A few others chose to go for talk time offers that were available. But now, the companies have silently removed all their talk-time plans from Paytm and their own apps. While earlier, the users could get recharges of Rs 50, Rs 100, Rs 300, Rs 500 and more done, now, the options in talk time have been brought down to just three. One is Rs 10, the other is Rs 1000 and the last one is Rs 5000. And yes, both Airtel and Vodafone Idea have the same three talk time options. Out of the three, the Rs 10 one only credits Rs 7 to the users’ account. Considering this, there are very little chances of it being used. So if you ever have to get a recharge done again, you will be forced to spend Rs 1,000. It is worth noticing that the combo packs that are available come with daily data, unlimited calls and SMS. However, most of them have a validity of 28 days. Once the validity is over, the outgoing calls of the user are stopped and eventually incoming calls too. However, the talk time offers that have been discontinued came with unlimited validity. So, if your usage was not much, you could have easily bought a talk time plan that is cheaper than the company’s combo offers like Rs 149, Rs 199, Rs 349, Rs 399 and more. Or, you could get a recharge of Rs 500 done and use it till even 2-3 months or however long it lasted. It is extremely likely that this step has been taken by the companies to increase the ARPU or the average revenue per person for themselves. One the flipside, assume that few customers now go for talk time plans, as combo offers club data, unlimited free calls and SMS in one recharge. Maybe the companies thought that these talk time offers are now obsolete, and hence discontinued them. But even if that is the real reason behind what seems like a discontinuation of certain talk-time offers, it will definitely increase the company’s ARPU. We reached out to Airtel regarding this, but we haven’t as yet got a response. But we’ll surely let you know if and when we do.
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