NTT Docomo Capex dips 37% to $750 million

July 30, 2015

NTT Docomo today said its Capex (capital spending) during the quarter ended June 30, 2015 fell 37.3 percent to 93.1 billion yen or $750 million.

The Japanese telecom operator said it invested in expanding the coverage of Premium 4G services and focused on cutting Capex.

“Capital expenditure was 93.1 billion yen, decreasing by 55.4 billion yen significantly compared to the same period of last fiscal year, because the capital expenditures for the second half is expected to be larger with the launch of Premium 4G and expansion of Premium 4G,” said Yoshikiyo Sakai, senior executive vice president of NTT Docomo.

The number of LTE base stations increased 1.6 fold to 106,900 in one year. Base stations for 100 megabit per second increased to 62,800. For Premium 4G area, the number of LTE base stations increased to 3,500 stations.

“We are going to roll out the network very efficiently. We will will introduce Advanced C-RAN infrastructure,” said Kiyohiro Ohmatsuzawa, director of Network.

NTT Docomo, which faces tough competition from SoftBank, said its Q1 revenues rose 0.1 percent to 1,077 billion yen, while income grew 12.3 percent to 235 billion yen.