Reliance Jio has reintroduced its Rs 299 Prime membership plan, days after Bharti Airtel discontinued its popular Rs 299 prepaid offering and raised the entry price of its unlimited plans to Rs 349.
Jio said the Rs 299 Prime membership will remain available to existing prepaid and postpaid customers, with the price guaranteed until Sept. 5, 2027.
The membership will also provide subscribers with dedicated priority customer support.
The move comes as telecom operators continue to rationalise their prepaid portfolios and seek to improve average revenue per user (ARPU).
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Airtel’s decision to withdraw its Rs 299 base plan, which offered 1GB of daily data for 28 days, effectively lifted the entry-level unlimited plan price by 16.7% to Rs 349. The new plan also offers 1.5GB of data per day.
Analysts at Centrum Broking described Airtel’s latest changes as one of its biggest single-day prepaid portfolio cleanups in recent years, calling it part of a broader tariff rationalisation exercise.
Several less-popular plans across 56-day and 90-day validity periods were also discontinued.
Jio’s decision to retain the Rs 299 price point could help it position the membership as a value proposition as the industry moves toward higher tariffs.
The company’s move also comes against the backdrop of stronger subscriber monetisation across the sector.
Notably, Airtel had reported an 11.5% sequential rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 8,167 crore for the June quarter, while revenue from operations increased 5.7% to Rs 58,539 crore. A key operational highlight was the improvement in average revenue per user (ARPU), which rose to Rs 264, ahead of analysts’ expectation of Rs 261.
Jio had logged a bottom-line of Rs 7,764 crore, compared to Rs 7,317 crore in the March quarter. The ARPU increased marginally to Rs 215.6, compared to Rs 214 in the previous quarter.
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