Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel today said its capital expenditure (Capex) for fiscal 2015 grew 76.4 percent to Rs 186,682 million or nearly $2.9 billion.
Airtel India Capex
Capex for India and South Asia was Rs 42,250 million in Q4 FY 2015 against Rs 22,410 million in Q4 2014. Out of this, Airtel India Capex was Rs 40,920 million against Rs 20,312 million.
Airtel has spent capital expenditure of Rs 34,598 million mainly for boosting data business, Rs 1,672 million for the Telemedia business and Rs 371 million in Airtel Business.
Bharti Airtel said the number of telecom sites have gone up to 146,539 sites from 138,755 sites. 3G sites have increased to 48,825 from 31,301 sites in Q4 fiscal 2014 and 41,850 in Q3 FY 2015.
The telecom company said mobile data customers grew 30.3 percent to 46.4 million. 17.3 percent of total customers are mobile data users. The total MBs on the network has increased 81.8 percent to 86.6 billion MBs against 47.7 billion MBs. Mobile data usage per customer rose 41.2 percent to 656 MBs as compared to 464 MBs in the same quarter last year. Data ARPU increased 32.3 percent to Rs 176 during the quarter.
Airtel Africa Capex
The company has increased the capital expenditure to $364 million for African operations.
Airtel Africa’s data customers increased 36.2 percent to 30.4 million from 22.3 million. Mobile data customers now represent 39.8 percent of the total customer base against 32.1 percent.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
