After posting 38% dip in Q2 profit Bharti Airtel to increase international rates


Bharti Airtel is set to increase its tariffs for making international telephone
calls, the company said in a short text message sent to customers.

 

The notification from India’s largest wireless phone company by sales and users
didn’t provide details. However, Bharti’s website showing the revised tariffs
showed an increase over earlier charges, according to MarketWatch.com.

 

The revision comes after Bharti hiked tariffs for local calls by nearly 20
percent in July. Rivals such as the Indian unit of Vodafone Group, Idea
Cellular. and Reliance Communications followed with discontinuing promotional
schemes that were hurting their profit margins.

 

Bharti Airtel reported
a 13.4 percent increase in revenue in Q2 2011-12 at $3.78 billion compared with
$3.28 billion in Q2 previous fiscal. The substantial growth in revenue was
primarily driven by Africa and non-voice businesses.

 

Profit decreased by 38 percent to $225 million in Q2 2011-12 from $358 million
in Q2 2010-11.

 

ARPU of Airtel saw a decline
to Rs 194 in FY 2011 from Rs 220 last fiscal, while minutes per user also
declined to 449 from 468 last year. Non-voice revenues saw an increase of 15
percent, as compared to 11.8 percent last year, while monthly churn also
decreased slightly to 7.6 percent in March 2011, as compared to 7.8 percent in
December 2010.

 

Airtel carried 211.8 billion minutes on its network during the quarter with
12.7 billion incremental minutes over the previous quarter. This enabled Airtel
to sustain our minutes of use per customer per month at 449.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
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