We are killing telecom industry in a way that is not conducive: Sunil Mittal

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ Billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal on Thursday said a combination of rock-bottom tariffs and high consumption is killing the telecom industry and sector regulator Trai needs to urgently intervene to strike a balance between the needs for protecting investments and consumer interest.

“…but, I think we need to have a balance between requirement of investments and consumer on the other side,” Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, told reporters after a pre-Budget meeting between Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and corporate leaders.

“My view is 200 ARPU (average revenue per user) is eventually going to ₹300 ARPU… At the lower end, ₹100 for a customer over a month of consuming rich data, voice and other services and on the upper end ₹450-500… therefore, blended eventual landing point of 300 a month, which will still be $ 4 a month… by far, the lowest anywhere in the world and yet consuming two or three times more data than anywhere else in the world,” Mittal said.