Airtel India’s investment for improvement in customer experience has resulted into reduction in mobile churn to 2.4 percent in Q4 fiscal 2024 from 2.9 percent in Q3.
Home broadband
Airtel’s home broadband reaches 60 million homes which contribute 35 percent of industry revenues. This broadband penetration is only 40 million and growing. Airtel aims at expanding fiber presence, driving penetration of converge offers to build in stickiness. Airtel will be leveraging digital targeting capabilities. Airtel India leverages FWA (fixed wireless access) as a complement to fiber.
Airtel says it is undertaking a structural programme to rehaul home broadband network infrastructure right from the fiber access terminal outside the home to architecture level fixes on network.
Airtel is also refining ways of working to improve the craftsmanship of the engineers in the home. Airtel has digital tools to monitor SOPs and take live pictures to authenticate them using artificial intelligence that makes this scalable.
Postpaid plans
The latest financial report from Airtel India says its postpaid family plans drive acceleration. Airtel India has over 80 million credit scored customers whom could move to postpaid. Customer experience driven by digital analytics and its small format stores will assist this segment to ensure growth.
Digital capabilities
For improvement in network experience, Airtel India has taken structural corrections and used digital tools and analytics to bring down mobile churn.
Airtel India is using digital capabilities to incubate new digital businesses. Its digital services like Airtel IQ, IoT, Cloud, SD-WAN, and Airtel Finance are receiving substantial investment.
Airtel India is focusing on an inbuilt CLM (Customer Life Cycle Management) tool for its push channels such as WhatsApp, messaging, call, e-mail as well as pull channels, app or integration with other OTT platforms. The CLM comes with the capability to generate feedback and optimize campaigns based on AB testing.
Optimization of network cost
Airtel has also optimized network cost worth of Rs 2,500 crores. Airtel India says network cost per site declined for the second time in the history of the company despite massive mobile expansion of sites, 5G expansion and increased cost of power.
Airtel has identified 60,000 high cost sites, looked into cost structure of site and put together a plan to optimize cost of the site. The exercise required the leverage of digital tools, data science, and physical work to bring cost down, Gopal Vittal, Airtel CEO, said during a recent analyst call.
Fresh investment
Airtel India has rolled out more than 33,000 sites in rural areas in the last six quarters meeting standards both in terms of absolute yield at the site as well as competitive performance. Airtel has also started expanding coverage in many geographies where market share is weak due to lesser coverage. Airtel India expects to rollout over 25,000 sites lower than last year in the next couple of quarters.
Re-farming mid-band spectrum
Bharti Airtel has started re-farming its existing mid-band spectrum to accommodate the growing traffic demand on its 5G network. Airtel is re-farming its mid-band spectrum to expand 5G services on its 1800, 2100, 2300 MHz bands as customers are moving to the 5G network.
Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said, “As more customers pivot to our 5G services, we have re-farmed our mid band spectrum which was being used for 4G services. With this we are also ready to launch Stand-alone technology.
Earlier, Airtel chose to focus on 5G non-standalone access (NSA) technology, which relies on a 4G core network, while rival Reliance Jio has opted for 5G standalone access.
“This will mean that the Airtel network will be the first network in India to run on both stand-alone and non-standalone modes allowing us to deliver the best experience in the market,” Randeep Sekhon said.
Airtel has conducted the pilot on the SA and NSA switch in Rewari, Chennai and Bhubaneswar. This capability on the 5G network will enable Airtel to introduce new innovative applications, services and solutions through open APIs.
5G achievements
Airtel India believes 5G customers can enjoy enhanced browsing speeds in addition to improved indoor coverage. Airtel has 72 million 5G customers on its network. The total number of 4G and 5G customers has reached 252.7 million. Mobile data traffic has increased 25 percent to 16,585 PBs in Q4 fiscal 2024 from 13,270 PBs in Q4 fiscal 2023.
Airtel India Capex investment was Rs 33,353 crore in fiscal 2024. Airtel has rolled out about 43,100 network sites and 55,982 kilometers of fiber.
Concerns
Airtel’s 5G availability grew from 12.5 percent to 20.7 percent, according to Opensignal report released in June 2024. 5G Availabilityis the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription have an active 5G connection.
5G availability is an important measure of the mobile experience as users can benefit from the superior experience that 5G provides when they have a 5G connection.
Investment in customer experience is bringing significant result for India’s second largest telecom operator. Airtel added 6.7 million REC customers, 7.8 million smart phone customers, and 0.8 million postpaid during Q4. The growth of Rs 16 in ARPU reaching Rs 209 at the end of March 2024 shows that Airtel’s investment in customer experience is bringing result.
Baburajan Kizhakedath
