Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have revealed their financial performance for the third quarter of fiscal 2018-19.

The India business of Bharti Airtel is headed by its CEO Gopal Vittal and Vodafone Idea is managed by its CEO Balesh Sharma.

Airtel India’s total revenues dropped 3 percent year on year to Rs 14,768 crore. Airtel India’s mobile services revenues dipped 5 percent year on year to Rs 10,189 in Q3 fiscal 2018-19.  This apart, Airtel India also generates revenue of Rs 3,111 crore from business clients, Rs 383 crore from DTH and Rs 550 crore from fixed broadband business.

Vodafone Idea’s total revenue fell 2.2 percent quarter on quarter to Rs 11,765 crore. Vodafone Idea does not reveal its specific revenue from enterprises and it is part of the total revenue. Vodafone Idea does not have any present in DTH business. But it has limited presence in fixed line.

Airtel generated mobile service revenue from 284.2 million mobile phone customers on its 2G, 3G and 4G networks. Vodafone Idea had 387.2 million subscribers as on 31 December 2018.

Airtel India has a better ARPU than Vodafone Idea. Vodafone Idea’s ARPU grew 1.5 percent quarter on quarter to Rs 89. Vodafone Idea’s ARPU had dropped 4.7 percent in Q2. Airtel India’s ARPU dropped to Rs 104 from Rs 123 in the same quarter last year. Airtel India’s ARPU achieved a sequential increase after 9 quarters of consecutive decline.

Capex of Airtel India’s mobile service business was better than Vodafone Idea. The Capex of Airtel India’s mobile service business dropped 24 percent to Rs 3,727 crore in Q3. Vodafone Idea’s Capex dropped significantly to Rs 1,169 crore in Q3 from Rs 3,295 in Q2 due to the ongoing network consolidation and delay in finalizing network suppliers.

Airtel India had 175,300 network towers against 163,808 network towers in Q3 fiscal 2018. Airtel India has 164,859 mobile broadband towers. Airtel India has 371,562 mobile broadband base stations vs 259,002 mobile broadband base stations in Q3 fiscal 2017-18 and 347,642 in Q2 fiscal 2018-19.

Airtel India has 273,600 km of optic fiber cable network (OFC) vs 263,507 in September 2018. The investment in its nationwide optic fiber network will assist Airtel to introduce 5G services in coming years.

Vodafone Idea has over 198,000 2G sites and over 376,000 broadband sites on 3G and 4G networks. Vodafone Idea has ~240,000 km of OFC vs ~239,000 in September 2018.

Vodafone Idea added 11,123 4G sites. Vodafone Idea’s 4G population coverage improved to over 64 percent from less than 50 percent in August 2018.

Vodafone Idea reported 16.3 percent increase in EBITDA to Rs 1,136.8 crore with 9.7 percent EBITDA margin.

Airtel India reported 44 percent dip in EBITDA to Rs 1,949.8 crore with EBITDA margin of 19.1 percent dropping from 32.6 percent. EBIT during the quarter was — Rs 1,903.2 crore as compared to +Rs 166.8 crore. EBIT margin was –18.7 percent vs +1.6 percent.

Airtel India’s 4G customer base reached at 77.1 million. Total MBs on the Airtel network have increased 190.9 percent to 3,217 billion MBs. Mobile data usage per customer rose 96.8 percent to 10,528 MBs. Airtel India achieved 42.1 percent growth in traffic to 703 billion minutes.

Vodafone Idea’s 4G subscriber base reached 75.3 million. Vodafone Idea’s minutes on network dropped 2.6 percent to 731,195 million minutes. Data volume increased 11.5 percent to 2,705 billion MB.

Monthly data usage per data subscriber improved to 6.2 GB vs 5.6 GB in Q2. Minutes on the network declined 2.6 percent, largely attributable to the introduction of service validity vouchers, Vodafone Idea said.

Baburajan K