NEW DELHI: Debt-ridden Vodafone Idea on Wednesday said its consolidated loss narrowed to Rs 7,176 crore in the Sept quarter, compared to a loss of Rs 8,747 crore in the same period a year ago, helped by an increase in tariffs.
The consolidated revenue from operations increased to Rs 10,932 crore during the quarter from Rs 10,716 crore a year ago, a growth of 2%. The company’s average revenue per user (Arpu) stood at Rs 166, a quarter-on-quarter growth of 8%. This has been enabled by an industry-wide tariff rise that began in June. However, Vodafone Idea’s ARPU still lagged its much-bigger rival Jio’s Rs 195 and Airtel’s Rs 233 for the same period.
Vodafone Idea has also been losing customers to Jio and Airtel while sBSNL is chipping into its entry-level customers. The company’s user base fell 2.4% sequentially and 6.7% year-on-year to 20.5 crore as of Sept 30, smaller than Jio’s 47.9 crore and Airtel’s 40.7 crore.