New Delhi: As consumers are irked with the recent hike in mobile tariffs announced by major telecom companies in India --Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, the Ministry of Communications (Department of Telecom) has responded to claims regarding recent mobile services tariff increase.


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In a statement Ministry of Communications said that with three private sector players and one public sector player, the current mobile services market operates through the market forces of demand and supply.


In India, presently, the mobile services are being delivered by three private sector licensees and one public sector licensee.  From the competition point of view, this is an optimal market structure for mobile services, the statement said.


"The rates of telecommunication services are decided by market forces, within the regulatory framework notified by the independent regulator ie. TRAI.  The Government does not intervene in the free market decisions as the functionality is under the domain of TRAI and tariffs are under forbearance.  Any change in the tariff of mobile services is notified by TSPs to the TRAI, which monitors, that such changes are within the prescribed regulatory framework. It is pertinent to mention here that the TSPs have increased the prices of mobile services after more than 2 years. In last 2 years, some of the TSPs have invested heavily in rolling out the 5G services across the country. This has resulted into a significant increase in median mobile speed to the level of 100 Mbps and jump in the India’s international rank from 111, in October 2022, to 15 today," the ministry statement said.


Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communications has given details of a brief comparison of mobile services pricing with India Vs Pakistan, China, US, UK And Other Major Countries.


As mentioned by Ministry of Communications, For minimum mobile , voice and data basket consisting of 140 min + 70 SMS + 2GB, comparison of mobile services pricing, as published by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (2023) in some of the neighboring and advanced countries is given below:


Economy Measure Names Measure Values
India and neighbouring countries
China USD 8.84
Afghanistan USD 4.77
Bhutan USD 4.62
Bangladesh USD 3.24
Nepal (Republic of) USD 2.75
India* USD 1.89
Pakistan USD 1.39
Other Countries
USA USD 49
Australia USD 20.1
South Africa USD 15.8
UK USD 12.5
Russian Federation USD 6.55
Brazil USD 6.06
Indonesia USD 3.29
Egypt USD 2.55

The note says that in case of India, at an average price of 1.89 USD per month, practically unlimited voice and 18GB per month is available to mobile subscribers.