May 24: The recent financial results of Indian telcos Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea reveal major gains because of the tariff hike for the prepaid segment announced last year in November-December.
All three telcos have reported an improved Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). Airtel has reported the highest ARPU of INR178 ($2.29) per user per month in March 2022, up from an ARPU of INR145 in March 2021.
On the other hand, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea report ARPU of INR167.6 ($2.16) and INR124 ($1.59), respectively.
Even so, both Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea have lost subscribers in the last financial year, while Airtel is the only telco to have gained new subscribers.
According to sources, regarding to subscriber growth, Vodafone Idea reported a loss of subscribers from 247.2 million in the quarter ended December 2021 to 243.8 million in the March 2022 quarter.
Reliance Jio also reported a drop in the number of subscribers from 421 million in the December 2021 quarter to 410 million in the March 2022 quarter.
Airtel emerged as the only service provider to have reported an increase in the subscriber base from 355 million in the December 2021 quarter to 359 million at the end of March 2022.
It is intriguing that Reliance Jio has lost subscribers in spite of the launch of JioPhone Next in November last year. The smartphone was positioned to help Jio realize its ambition of having 500 million subscribers on its network.
Overall, Airtel has posted improved results when compared with its peers. The company has reported 164% increase in profit at INR20080 million ($258 million) for the quarter ending March 2022 while it has reported a consolidated profit of INR42550 million ($548.5 million) for the entire financial year.
Jio Platforms, the parent company of Reliance Jio, recorded an increase of 14% in profit of INR43130 million ($556 million) in the March quarter when compared with the December quarter profit of INR37950 million ($489.26 million). It reported gross revenue of INR958 billion ($12.6 billion) in the FY22 up by 17.1%. The service provided the net profit for the financial year 2022 was INR154 billion ($2 billion).
On the other hand, Vodafone Idea is the only loss-making private telco in India now.
Home broadband is emerging as the new battlefield between telcos, especially Jio and Airtel.
While Airtel grew its subscribers for home customers from 4.1 million in the third quarter to 4.4 million in the fourth quarter of FY22, it recorded a small drop in ARPU for this segment from INR657 ($8.46) in the December quarter to INR650 ($8.38) in the March quarter of FY22. Jio emerged as the leader in this segment with 5 million subscribers.
Airtel made key gains in the last financial year. It emerged as the only service provider to have gained subscribers and also recorded the highest ARPU.
