{"id":25793,"date":"2020-05-20T18:03:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T12:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/telecom-tariffs-still-unsustainable-airtel\/"},"modified":"2020-05-20T18:03:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T12:33:37","slug":"telecom-tariffs-still-unsustainable-bharti-airtel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=25793","title":{"rendered":"Telecom tariffs still unsustainable: Airtel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Telco hopeful that ARPUs will rise<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though the telecom industry has witnessed some \u2018repairs\u2019, more needs to be done on tariffs which are still \u2018unsustainably low\u2019, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India &amp; South Asia, Bharti Airtel said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company, which on Monday had posted a loss of \u20b95,237 crore for the January-March 2020 quarter due to an exceptional charge on account of reassessment of statutory dues, is hopeful of achieving an average revenue per user (ARPU) of \u20b9200 in the short-term, as against \u20b9154 in the reported quarter. This is against an ARPU of \u20b9135 in the October-December 2012 period, and \u20b9123 in the year-ago quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe believe that an ARPU of \u20b9154 is inadequate to turn a reasonable Return on Capital as a company and remain hopeful that ARPU will get to \u20b9200 in the short term and eventually to \u20b9300 which is where it should be for a business like ours. Of course, even at this level of ARPU, we believe, we will be very well-placed to serve all the lower end customers who may have the capacity to pay \u20b9100 or less,\u201d Mr. Vittal said during a post-earning analysts call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He added that while there would be some growth in ARPU because of the upgradation from 2G to 4G, \u201cour tariffs are still unsustainably low\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe industry is very keen to have TRAI intervene in putting together a set of floor prices\u2026 all the responses have gone to TRAI and they haven\u2019t taken a decision right now given the circumstances around COVID-19, but I do believe that this needs to get corrected sooner rather than later,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The private telecom operators raised tariffs by up to 40% in December 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr. Vittal added that the company\u2019s overall capex for this year was expected to \u201cbe more moderated\u201d than that of last year. Bharti Airtel on Monday had said during FY20, its capex investment stood at \u20b925,359 crore to ensure superior customer experience besides front ending some investment to ensure seamless services during the ongoing pandemic. Of this \u20b911,339 crore capex was for the January-March 2020 quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr. Vittal added that the company saw strong traction for home broadband services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a rapid surge in the need for home broadband\u2026 in Q4, we had about 63,000 net additions, which is one of the higher numbers that we\u2019ve seen in many quarters, and even during the lockdown there has been a lot of demand for actually getting home broadband going,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Airtel\u2019s ARPU from home broadband service also increased to \u20b9803 from \u20b9787 in the previous quarter. However, on y-o-y, the ARPU was lower from \u20b9815 in January-March 2019 quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>With inputs from <\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/business\/Industry\/telecom-tariffs-still-unsustainable-airtel\/article31626326.ece\">The Hindu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Telco hopeful that ARPUs will rise Even though the telecom industry has witnessed some \u2018repairs\u2019, more needs to be done on tariffs which are still \u2018unsustainably low\u2019, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India &amp; South Asia, Bharti Airtel said on Tuesday. The company, which on Monday had posted a loss of \u20b95,237 crore for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}