Vodafone Idea's ARPU Declines To Rs.107 During Q2FY20

After posting a loss of Rs. 50,000 crore in Q2FY20, Vodafone Idea, India's largest telecom operator revealed that its average revenue per user (ARPU) has declined to Rs. 107, as compared to Rs. 108 in Q1FY20. Besides, the company informed that the subscriber base declined to 311.1 million from 320 million in Q1FY20.

However, the company will continue to invest in 4G to increase coverage and capacity. In addition, during the quarter Vodafone added 12,000 4G FDD sites to increase its 4G coverage in the country. The company reveals that it has deployed 6,000 TDD sites in addition to deployment of Massive MIMO in key circles to increase capacity.

During the quarter, the company added 5.5 million 4G customers, taking our overall 4G subscriber base to 90.3 million. Further, the total data volumes grew by 8.4 percent to 3,492 billion MB compared to the last quarter. However, total minutes on the network declined by 6.7 percent during the same quarter due to a reduction in incoming minutes.

"Accordingly, certain assets capitalized earlier may no longer be usable, resulting in an accelerated depreciation charge of Rs. 40.3 billion disclosed as part of exceptional items," the company's statement mentioned.

It is also worth mentioning that the company has revised its Capex guidance to Rs. 130 billion from Rs. 170 billion for FY20, primarily on account of savings resulting from better pricing, disaggregation of components while ordering and reduction in planned 4G footprint in non-priority areas. The company has also informed that it is waiting for regulatory approval from the Department of Telecommunications, for the merger between Indus Towers and Bharti Infratel.

To recall, Vodafone Idea plans to monetize its 11.15 percent stake in Indus after the completion of the Indus-Infratel merger. Besides, the company is exploring options to monetize nearly 160,000 Kilometers of intra-city and inter-city fibre.