Airtel is a private company so ofcourse it will focus on profits but at the same time being their long time mobile, broadband and DTH customer i find their overall service quality and offerings to be really good and they continuously improve on the same based on customer feedback and own research.
Also u r right that Airtel did offer data at high prices prior to entry of Jio and i even agree that it was infact overpriced but at the same time with entry of Jio and their free internet offerings there certainly was a big disruption and large part of population benefited from it but it was a no a good thing to happen for general health of the sector. It adversely impacted the quality of services and mobile operators faced losses. We remember endless call drops or other such issues and even their investments in expanding across various things took a backseat or slowed down. I knew one day even Jio will stop freebies to build a financially viable business and increase pricing of plans and so it did happen and we know it is still continuing and there would be raise in prices at regular intervals. Just for information, i never took a Jio Connection and i do not like such kind of disruption which in long run only is bad for customers.
Vi is in really bad shape, they have been facing issues on several fronts....airtel managed extremely well to counter Jio in the disruption period but Vi did not manage to catch up with either. Large number of Airtel customers stayed with them owing to good service quality , many would have opted for Jio too but kept airtel connections active as 2ndary SIM ...later many came back to Airtel and used it as primary connection while Jio became secondary connection.
Airtel has a stronghold in urban areas while Jio has large number of customers from rural,,semi rural areas thus Airtel has a very good ARPU. Vi still has biggest postpaid user base as i had read article on the same some months back but owing to debts ad other issues they r finding it hard to compete or expand/improve its services and subscriber base across other areas ore regions. Already now government owns 33 % stake in Vi as they were unable to make some due payments and thus government used the power mentioned in agreement to acquire stake in the company bcoz of failure to pay money owed to them. Vi even had big dues to telecom tower companies when i last read about the same in November 2022.
Airtel Digital TV has not been pricey but rather quite affordable on all fronts, they have large subscribe base and various other revenue mediums like carriage fe, ads on home channels/EPG banner/ boot screen page, etc. which helps garner profits.
I agree 30 day lock in for standalone channels is really not a good thing , hopefully it will be withdrawn by airtel digital tv and i really pray the same is not implemented by other DTH operators. Customers should get free choice to opt for channels thru any mode be it bouquet or a-la-carte mode. Also broadcasters need to bring pricing of bouquet and standalone channels down and secondly not give broadcaster bouquet at huge discount and keep a-la-carte prices of channels high which again is a way for people to not opt for a-la-carte option
