Idea Cellular has added 7.9 million new 3G subscribers in Q1 fiscal 2016 with 90 percent growth over last one year.

The total number of 3G data customers of Idea Cellular stands at 16.7 million.

The Indian telecom service provider said  3G data ARPU for 3G data subscribers fell to Rs 203 in Q1 FY 2016 from Rs 209 in Q4 FY 2015, but increased from Rs 177 in Q1 FY 2015.

3G data uages by 3G data subscribers was 778 MB against 777 MB in Q4 FY 2015.

Over the last one year, 3G data volume growth led the growth of overall Mobile data traffic (2G+3G) by nearly 1.9 times from 32.5 million Megabytes in Q1 FY 2015 to 62.7 million Megabytes in Q1 FY 2016.

Idea Cellular in a statement said that the mobile data customer base has increased by 3.7 million to 37.2 million, with 22.9 percent of overall Idea subscriber base using Idea 2G or 3G platform to access internet.

Idea Cellular today announced that its first quarter fiscal 2016 revenue rose 16.3 percent to Rs 8,798.3 crore, while profit grew 27.8 percent to Rs 930.8 crore.

The growth in profit and revenue is despite regulatory issues faced by the Aditya Birla group company.

Due to TRAI Interconnect (IUC) regulations primarily reducing mobile incoming IUC charges from 20p to 14p/min the gross revenue for Q1 FY 2016 is impacted by Rs 3,170 million as compared to Q1 FY 2015.

TRAI Roaming TTO effective from May 01, 2015 reducing the upper cap for national roaming voice call charges and SMS charges between 20 percent-75 percent and increase in service tax rate effective from June 01, 2015 from 12.36 percent to 14 percent have also impacted the financial results for this quarter.

Idea Cellular said its ARPU was steady at Rs 182. Its Voice usage per subscriber was 408 minutes against 401 minutes in Q1 FY 2015).

The voice rate realization fell by 11.2 percent to 32.9p/min. Non-Voice revenue share increased to 26.1 percent this quarter from 17.8 percent in Q1 FY 2015.

Baburajan K
[email protected]