India’s mobile and internet market is staring at the setting of a floor data price soon
Price hikes might potentially derail the entire digital India growth story
There is scope for companies to offer new monetization solutions to telcos like public wi-fi
The hyper-growth story of a digital India was fueled since the advent of Reliance Jio, in 2016, resulting in India becoming the cheapest and the second largest mobile internet ecosystem in the world. Just to provide context, the average global price per gigabyte (GB) of data in 2019 was $8.53, whereas the average price in India stood at $0.26 (over 30x cheaper), as per TRAI. However, all of this is set to change in the near future.
India’s mobile and internet market is staring at a potential setting of a floor data price soon. As reported by ET, telecom companies are likely to increase data pack prices by the end of 2020. In addition to this, telcos have proposed a floor price between INR 15 and INR 30 (5x to 10x of the current lowest data price per GB). The net effect of this will likely result in a 25-30% increase in mobile internet prices, with the amount of data available in these packs reducing to half of what we get today. This can have a negative impact on the growing internet user base of the country.