The telecommunications market is really competitive in our country, and from time to time we are seeing movements that are very important to take into account by the companies that operate in Spain. Vodafone has been the last to announce something that could revolutionize this market, since this great operator is preparing to update its clients’ rates based on the CPI. We tell you more about it.
This new measure adopted by Vodafone can completely shake the entire market, although it will still take a few months for this to happen. As we will see a little later, this new measure will take place from January 1.
Vodafone will raise rates based on the CPI
As we say, Vodafone has taken the drastic option of making its prices fluctuate, and it will do so from now on with respect to the variations suffered by the Consumer Price Index (or CPI). This move is pioneering in the telecommunications industry in our country, since to date no other company or operator had dared to make a similar move.
New customers who come to the operator from now on will have a clause in their contracts that indicates this adjustment based on the IPC, and customers who were already with the operator before this date will see how their contracts are modified to include this novelty. in the rates.
The implementation of this new recalculation of the rates based on the CPI will take place between January 1 and March 31, 2023, and from then on it will take place every year in the first quarter. The CPI formula that Vodafone will apply will be determined by the official CPI calculated from October of the previous year (2021) to September of the current year (2022). This is the same index used by the Government of Spain to recalculate pensions. This measure excludes those economically vulnerable customers who are covered by the social tariffs of the red operator.
According to Expansión, this measure has already been implemented in the United Kingdom, and Vodafone is already preparing to take it to more European markets. Vodafone’s decision is very important, as it could have a knock-on effect with respect to other telecommunications companies, something that would completely change the current scenario. The announcement of this measure is a consequence of the fact that its contract model does not include the possibility of including an adjustment based on the CPI.
As we say, this movement by Vodafone can be the beginning of a fairly important change in the telecommunications sector. All this movement will depend mainly on the impact that this new measure has on the operator in the coming months and the impact that is attributed to the decision to adjust prices to the IPC. If the impact is considered negative and a large number of customers unsubscribe, it is unlikely that the rest of the operators will go after Vodafone and apply similar measures.
If we take what happened in the United Kingdom with this new measure as a reference, the truth is that we can get an idea of what could happen in our country. Vodafone applied this change last April, and the consequences were quite important, since the rest of the big British operators have ended up following this measure.