Telecom Lead Asia: Vodafone India has clocked 9 percent increase in revenue to £1.125 billion in Q3 2012-13.
Strong growth in mobile voice minutes and a stable competitive environment contributed to the growth in revenue.
However, TRAI’s new regulations affected Vodafone India.
During the third quarter subscriber verification regulations were changed, leading to a sharp fall in gross customer additions which resulted in net customer disconnections.
The company lost 5,189,000 mobile users in Q3.
Regulation was also introduced to further limit the processing fees that operators can charge.
Vodafone India’s voice revenue in Q3 declined to £785 million from £790 million in Q3 2011-12.
Its messaging revenue decreased to £41 million from £49 million.
Vodafone India said its data revenue increased to £94 million from £83 million.
Data revenue grew by 23.8 percent driven by an increase in customers taking data bundles and an increase in 2G data pricing.
At 31 December 2012 active data customers totaled 33.1 million, including 2.5 million 3G subscribers.
Vodafone Group’s data revenue grew 12.8 percent to £1.7 billion and now accounts for 16.2 percent of Group service revenue. 33.4 percent of our European customers now use smartphones, compared to 24.4 percent at December 2011.
The Group has continued to invest in spectrum to support the development of LTE services, acquiring eight blocks of spectrum in the Netherlands for €1.4 billion (£1.1 billion), 12 blocks of spectrum in Ireland for €161 million (£130 million) and additional spectrum in the 1800 MHz band in India for INR 11.3 billion (£138 million).
Vodafone India’s main rival Airtel’s blended ARPU touched Rs 185 ($3.4) per month in Q3.
Airtel’s voice ARPU was Rs 153 and voice realization was 35.2 paisa per minute.
Airtel’s value added services (VAS), which includes SMS, MMS, Ring Back Tones, Airtel Talkies, Music on Demand etc. contributed to approximately 9.9 percent of the total revenues of the segment. Airtel adopted the TRAI regulation on seeking double confirmation before activation of value added services and faced temporary decline in VAS revenues.
Data consumption grew at 25 percent on sequential basis and is about to cross 20 billion MBs per quarter.
Data ARPU was Rs 47, helped by average data download of 161 MBs per user per month, and blended data realization rate of 29.3 paisa per MB.
Airtel had 41.5 million data (mobile internet) customers, of which 5.2 million used 3G services.
The revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2012 for mobile services stood at Rs 109,364 million, a growth of 7 percent over the corresponding quarter last year.
