Vi’s free roaming offer could intensify premium telecom competition

Vodafone Idea’s decision to bundle international roaming (IR) into select prepaid, postpaid and enterprise plans could shift competition in India’s telecom market towards benefit-led premiumisation, with analysts expecting peers to assess customer response before making similar changes.

“In the near term, there may be minor revenue losses for telcos, but we think that with industry subscriber growth largely saturated, all three telcos would want to earn more from existing users, and premiumisation is a way to achieve that,” analysts from Nomura said.