Vodafone India said its service revenue fell 22.3 percent to €1.387 billion or $1.622 billion in the first quarter ended 30 June 2018 as against 21.2 percent drop in Q4 fiscal 2017-18.

Vodafone India said its revenue from mobile service fell substantially to €885 million in Q1 2018-19 from €1,303 million in Q1 2017-18.

The company said its fixed service revenue dropped to €70 million in Q1 2018-19 from €82 million in Q1 2017-18.Vodafone India said the steep dip in revenue reflects cuts to both domestic and international MTRs in prior quarters and intense price competition between the market leader Airtel and the new entrant Reliance Jio.

Vodafone India added 4,900 4G sites during the quarter as part of the strategy to retain its high value customers. Vodafone has 77 million data users including 30.9 million on 4G network in India. Vodafone India said its mobile phone customers are using 4.6 GB of data per month.

Reliance Jio is the market leader in 4G space with more than 200 million customers.

Vodafone India’s contract ARPU declined 20 percent and pre-paid ARPU dropped 28 percent in the first quarter.

This pricing pressure was mitigated as customers consolidated spending onto a single-SIM following the increased penetration of ‘unlimited’ offers, which have now been adopted by 29 percent of its pre-paid customer base.

Vodafone India’s customer base fell by 3 million quarter-on-quarter, reflecting the SIM consolidation trend across the market reaching 219.7 million.

Merger update

Vodafone said it received conditional regulatory approval from the Department of Telecoms (DoT) for the merger of Vodafone India with Idea Cellular.

Idea Cellular has subsequently paid spectrum liberalisation fees of €0.5 billion, and provided a bank guarantee to cover certain disputed demands which are the subject of ongoing court cases.

“Our target is to close the merger before the end of August, enabling us to make a fast start on capturing substantial cost synergies,” said Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao.

Baburajan K