NEW DELHI: Debt-ridden Vodafone Idea on Wednesday said its consolidated loss narrowed to Rs 7,176 crore in the September quarter, compared to a loss of Rs 8,747 crore in the same period a year ago, helped by an increase in tariffs.
The consolidated revenue from operations increased to Rs 10,932 crore during the quarter from Rs 10,716 crore a year ago, a growth of 2%.
The company’s average revenue per user (ARPU) stood at Rs 166, a quarter-on-quarter growth of 8%. This has been enabled by an industry-wide tariff rise that began in June. However, Vodafone Idea’s ARPU still lagged its much-bigger rival Jio’s Rs 195 and Airtel’s Rs 233 for the same period.
Vodafone Idea has also been losing customers to Jio and Airtel while state-owned BSNL is chipping into its entry-level customers. The company’s user base fell 2.4% sequentially and 6.7% year-on-year to 20.5 crore as of Sept. 30, smaller than Jio’s 47.9 crore and Airtel’s 40.7 crore.
The company has now lined up massive apex investments to boost its network infra and expand 4G even as it looks to launch 5G. “Post the successful capital raise, we kickstarted our 4G expansion drive on an accelerated trajectory. We expanded 4G data capacity by 14% and 4G population coverage by 2.2 crore, and consequently our 4G speeds improved by 18%,” Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited, said.
