Airtel plans to roll out VoLTE service by end of this financial year

India's largest telecom player Bharti Airtel is planning to roll out its VoLTE service by end of the current financial year (FY 18).

"We have done (VoLTE) trials in 5-6 cities. Towards the end of this fiscal year, we will be taking VoLTE across the country. The uptake of VoLTE devices will depend on certification...We should be very much national in the coming 6-9 months," Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel said.

He expects that 3G networks in India will be phased out faster than other parts of the world and "India will get to a situation where 4G and 2G will co-exist for a while."

At present only Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio is offering the VoLTE or Voice over LTE networks in the country and that was the main reason why Jio is providing free calls to its customers.

Vittal also said that "Bharti Airtel will look at bundling opportunities with handset companies to grow its market share."

Meanwhile, the company reported 75 percent decline in its first quarter profit from Rs 1,462 crore to 367 crores in the three months ended 30 June.

Bharti Airtel says that India revenues for Q1'18 at Rs 17,244 crore have declined by 10.0 percent Y-o-Y primarily led by the mobile drop of 14.1 percent Y-o-Y.

However, mobile data traffic has grown three fold to 472 billion MBs in the quarter as compared to 158 billion MBs in the corresponding quarter last year. Mobile broadband customers increased by 33.7 percent to 48.9 million from 36.6 million in the corresponding quarter last year.