MUMBAI: India’s older telecom operators are increasingly bundling voice and data plans instead of offering them separately, a switch they expect will convert multi-SIM users into single-SIM ones and help increase average revenue per user (ARPU) over time with greater adoption of higher data packs.Bundled plans account for nearly a fifth of total plans, according to some estimates, and are expected to rise to about 40% in a year. Further, about a fourth of the total subscribers have switched to bundled plans in the past nine months, and this proportion is expected to rise to about 50% in the next two years.According to a Motilal Oswal report, at the end of December 2017 there were 290 million subscribers in the country who had opted for a bundled plan of one of the top four telcos.”Bundling offers will push up ARPU in the middle and long term. If there are no more tariff wars, then bundling plans will help operators reach an ARPU of Rs 200 from about Rs 130 now,” said Rohan Dhamija, who is head of India and Middle East at Analysys Mason.A weak third quarter drove ARPU – a key performance parameter – down for incumbents. While Airtel and Idea Cellular’s ARPU was Rs 124 and Rs 114 respectively, 15-month old Reliance Jio Infocomm clocked an ARPU of Rs 154.Himanshu Kapania, managing director of Idea Cellular, said last week that bundled plans will help incumbents get their voice customers to join the data plans. In an analyst call last Wednesday, he said the operator would target low-end, pure voice customers to upgrade to Rs 25-150 ARPU levels through a series of tariff and product interventions.”Bundled offers are the order of the day. They help to lock in the ARPU and ensure the operator’s services becomes the primary SIM for the customer. The days of rate per minute of rate per MB are over,” said Bharat Bhargava, partner telecom advisory services at EY.Separate voice and data plans allow users to have one SIM card for each service of different operators, who may offer them the lowest price. But a bundled offer forces users to choose only one SIM card, thus ensuring subscriber loyalty to one telco.With the entry of Jio came free voice offers bundled with dollops of data, forcing incumbents to follow suit and build in data plans in their tariffs to make subscribers opt for them. “Voice will not get the revenue, it will be data. Operators are now counting on bundled plans, which till now were taken up by only 20% of the high revenue generating subscribers,” said Mritunjay Kapur, head-TMT, KPMG India.Brokerage firm CLSA said in a report that Jio’s ARPU is 25% more than the blended ARPU (2G/3G/4G) reported by market leader Bharti Airtel. “Jio’s ARPU premium is driven by all its subscribers being on the 4G network and all on bundled plans of unlimited voice and a 1GB/day data allowance,” the report said.Kapur said bundled offers will also help telcos get feature phone users to transition to smartphones. In the past few months incumbent telcos have weaved in cashback and bundled offers on lower priced 4G smartphone handsets to get more subscribers.