Vodafone Idea (Vi) will emulate bigger rivals, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, and look to increase the entry-level pricing for customers wanting to go 5G as it expands its next-gen mobile broadband operations in the coming months, the telco's top management told analysts at the company's recent fourth-quarter earnings call.At present, Vi's introductory 5G offer at ₹299 is priced well below Airtel and Jio's base 5G prepaid plans of ₹398 and ₹349 respectively. Vi's base 5G plan has a 28-day validity span akin to those of Airtel and Jio's entry-level 5G packs. But Jio and Airtel offer a larger data allowance at 2GB a day in their 5G base packs compared to Vi's 1 GB a day data quota."The company will look to increase the minimum threshold for availing of 5G, like with Bharti/Jio, as the network expands," Axis Capital said in a research note, citing Vi's Q4FY25 conference call takeaways. Vi's leadership also told analysts during the June 2 earnings call that over 60% of its customers with 5G phones had already upgraded to the next-gen mobile broadband service in the four cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh and Patna) where the company has launched 5G services. The telco's management added that the rollout of 5G had also resulted in de-bottlenecking 4G capacity and improved the network experience of 4G users.Going forward, Vi will roll out 5G in key cities across the 17 circles (where it has 5G spectrum) by August 2025 and Axis Capital sees a sequential uptick in the telco's advertising and marketing spends, largely to back up its 5G launch.Vi's upcoming 5G base pricing strategy could potentially mirror the earlier moves of its bigger rivals, say analysts.Following the headline rate hikes in July 2024, Jio and Airtel had increased the base rates for their subscribers wishing to upgrade to 5G in a bid to boost monetisation of their next-gen mobile service, having invested billions on 5G airwaves and pan-India network rollouts.Analysts, though, said Vi's targeted 90% 4G population coverage, which would entail around 220,000 broadband sites, hinges on the telco lining up its long pending debt-raise from banks. "While they (Vi) can reach 85-86% 4G coverage,independent of funding, reaching 90% would require bank funding. But the Supreme Court quashing (its) adjusted gross revenue dues waiver plea, and company's dependence on government for relief, leads us to believe that ₹25,000 crore debt-raise would be delayed to March-26," Ambit Capital said in a research note.
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