iWorld
Sunil Mittal advocates hiking minimum tariff, strategic content deals for ARPU growth
MUMBAI: India’s telecom industry has been bleeding losses for some time now. The entry of Reliance Jio in the market has only made things even more challenging. Airtel’s Sunil Bharti Mittal thinks 2020 could be the year when this haemorrhaging may stop. He also thinks that taking the lower table of tariff up and strategic content deals with online video platforms can help the industry to improve ARPUs which has been sliding continuously.
In an interview with BloombergQuint at the World Economic Forum, Mittal said that getting more customers is necessary for telcos to drive up ARPUs. He mentioned Airtel’s recent move of limiting its minimum to Rs 35. If customers positively respond to the step, then Airtel may take it up to Rs 60 or 80.
“There’s got to be a minimum ARPU coming in. Even for Reliance Jio, their minimum pack is Rs 50, there’s nothing below that. So you’ll have to keep taking the lower table up. And those people who are gouging a lot of data will have to start giving more than Rs 399. They were comfortably giving Rs 500-800,” Mittal added.
Mittal also pointed out that right segmentation is a necessity and providing high-end customers access to content platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Zee or Wynk for music will also help telco players. He is also hopeful that the trend of ARPUs going up will be visible from 2019.
After disrupting mobile broadband sector, Jio is now prepping up for its grand entry in fixed line broadband also. Although Mittal thinks there will be some turbulence in the sector, he is confident about surviving the upcoming storm on the back of previous experience. Despite the segment being a small part of the business, Airtel is planning to grow there. “We have been reducing our tariffs from Rs 1100 to now around Rs 700. So it will settle at around Rs 500 depending on where Jio comes in with pricing,” he commented.
In the changing scenario, many telecom players both in India and outside India are eying on building a content library while some of them are venturing into content creation. Though Airtel is striking strategic partnerships with various OTT players, it isn't interested in investing in content creation.
“We are not going to develop content on our own but we are partnering with Netflix, Amazon, Eros, Zee, Hulu. We are becoming the partner of choice as a telecom carrier for all the content players. That’s our strategy. We are not going to make investments in the areas we don’t understand very well. Similarly, we will go for e-commerce. Eventually, if that plays out then there are enough e-commerce companies who will seek us out,” Mittal commented on partnerships over acquisition of digital content.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
