Vodafone Idea’s network team headed by CTO Vishant Vora has achieved several milestones in the June quarter of 2019.
Vodafone Idea has achieved network integration in 66 percent of districts across India. Vodafone Idea has deployed Massive MIMO, a pre-5G technology, in key areas to enhance capacity — in addition to the rollout of TDD sites.

Vodafone Idea has achieved the status of the fastest 4G network in Delhi, West Bengal and Chennai, according to Ookla.

Vodafone Idea has achieved 50 percent increase in 4G speeds in consolidated telecom circles compared to December, 2018.

The company’s engineering team has initiated the use of LTE 900 in telecom circles such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala, Gujarat and Haryana through dynamic spectrum refarming.
Vodafone Idea’s Capex spend for the first quarter of fiscal 2019-20 has reached Rs 28.4 billion.

Vodafone Idea CEO Balesh Sharma said: “We remain focused on expanding our 4G coverage to over a billion Indians as well as expanding our data capacities by adding more sites on TDD and deploying Massive MIMO.”

Vodafone Idea completed network integration in major cities including Bangalore, Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Trivandrum.

Vodafone Idea, as part of network integration exercise, removed surplus equipment from ~38,000 sites out of the total ~73,000 co-located sites. In addition, Vodafone Idea exited ~14,000 low utilization sites by the end of June 30, 2019.

Vodafone Idea added ~6,500 FDD sites to increase 4G coverage and deployed ~15,000 TDD sites and ~4,400 Massive MIMO sites in select key locations to increase data capacity during the quarter.

Vodafone Idea initiated 4G on 900 MHz in certain locations such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala, Gujarat and Haryana through dynamic spectrum refarming.

Vodafone Idea’s 4G population coverage reached ~68.6 percent (~830 million Indians) as of June 30, 2019, compared to less than 50 percent in August 2018.

Vodafone Idea added 4.1 million 4G customers, taking the overall 4G subscriber base to 84.8 million. The broadband subscriber base reached 110.5 million. Total data volumes grew by 9.3 percent to 3,222 billion MB compared to the last quarter.

Vodafone Idea’s revenue fell 4.3 percent quarter on quarter to INR 112.7 billion in the June quarter due to the churn of customers who had recharged on service validity plans in the March quarter. ARPU of Vodafone rose 3.8 percent quarter on quarter to INR 108 during the quarter.