Bharti Airtel Ltd.

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest integrated private telecom services provider has hiked call tariffs by 20% in six major circles including New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The hike in tariff will be passed on to pre-paid customers as well.

Accordingly, tariffs have been hiked from 1 paise per second to 1.2 paise per second. The other telecom players will also follow the suit. Bharti paid $10.7 billion last June for the Africa business of Kuwaiti telecom operator Zain. Its interest costs have soared due to the African purchase as well as from paying $3.3 billion to buy third-generation (3G) spectrum in India to offer mobile and wireless broadband services.

Last month, Tata TeleServices had hiked SMS and STD tariffs for its new users. Most of the operators had been tinkering with tariffs over the last few months and the rest of the industry, including new players, would follow soon.