Indian telcos post 15% revenue surge, driven by tariff hikes
What's the story
India's top telecom players have reported a 15% year-on-year (YoY) jump in their combined revenues for the March quarter.
The growth is mainly due to industry-wide tariff hikes and strong gains in mobile broadband users.
According to CLSA, despite two fewer days in the fiscal fourth quarter, the mobile revenues of these companies grew 15% YoY to ₹67,600 crore, led by tariff hikes of 11-25% in July 2024 and subscriber additions.
Revenue report
Airtel, Jio outperform Vi
Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio led the charge with a 21% and 16% YoY growth in India mobile revenues, respectively.Vodafone Idea (Vi), on the other hand, lagged with just a 4% increase during the same period.The varying impact of July 2024 rate hikes resulted in different ARPU growth rates for these companies: Airtel at 17%, Jio at 14%, and Vi at a lower-than-expected 12.3%.
Customer growth
Airtel, Jio gain over millions of customers
An analysis by CLSA of company data showed that Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel added 6.1 million and 5 million customers in Q4FY25, respectively.
This growth underscores their dominance over Vi, which lost a staggering 1.6 million customers during the same period.
The data highlights the continuing struggle of Vi to compete with its larger rivals effectively.
Tariff changes
Push for tariff pricing structure revamp
Both Airtel and Vi have pushed for a revamp of the telecom sector's tariff pricing structure.
They want to do away with unlimited daily data allowances and shift to a pay-as-you-use model.
This would ensure that mobile users who consume more data pay accordingly.
The last mobile rate hike by India's private carriers was in July 2024.