Wednesday, November 27
India’s top two telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have seen sharp on-year jumps in their respective selling, general & administrative (SG&A) costs in the fiscal second quarter, amid higher customer churn caused by SIM consolidation after the headline rate hikes of July.Industry executives and analysts said Jio and Airtel’s significantly higher SG&A payouts signalled heightened competition to retain and acquire high-value customers after the recent price hikes. They added that this also indicated Jio and Airtel are incentivising mobile number portability (MNP) through higher channel payouts to distributors and dealers.As per company data, Jio’s SG&A costs have jumped 41.3% on-year to Rs 1,601 crore in Q2FY25, during which Airtel’s payouts on this score jumped 2
