Bharti Airtel sees opportunity in raising tariff for data services as it feels that rich are paying less and poor are not required to pay anymore, a senior official of the company said.
Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff
During the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of the current fiscal, Bharti Airtel vice-chairman and MD Gopal Vittal said that the company has written to the government for a relief on adjusted gross revenue and has demanded that it should be given benefit at par with other telecom operator, without naming Vodafone Idea.
Talking about the business growth, Vittal said that the company’s focus is to improve customer mix and continue to sustain postpaid and smartphone customers upgrade on the network.
Vittal said that he sees scope in raising tariff for data services as it is very low in India when compared to even markets that have a low per capita income.
“The architecture of pricing in India is quite skewed. At the entry level itself or just above the entry level, you get so much data allowance, calling and messaging, that you really don’t have any reason to upgrade.
“It’s just an unfortunate situation where people who can afford to pay, the rich, are paying less and the poor, you know, we don’t need to charge the poor anymore,” Bharti Airtel vice-chairman and MD Gopal Vittal said.
He was replying to a question on tariff during the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of the current fiscal.
A customer needs to pay Rs 199 for a month-long connection which comes with unlimited local, STD, roaming calls and 2GB data limit.
By paying Rs 100 more a subscriber of Airtel can get 1 GB data per day and it goes up to 3 GB data per day with plans starting from Rs 449 onwards.
Bharti Airtel has posted a 43 per cent year-on-year increase in its consolidated profit to Rs 5,947.9 crore in the quarter ended June 2025, mainly on account of increase in customer base.
Vittal said if India had a more sensible pricing architecture like Indonesia ARPU (average revenue per user) would have been substantially higher than where the country’s telecom industry is at present without any pain to customers at the low end.
As per UK-based data price information platform Cable.co.uk, average data price in India was around 16 cents while in Indonesia it was around 28 cents in 2023.
Bharti Airtel India operations average revenue per user (ARPU), a key matrix to determine a telecom operator’s growth, in India increased to Rs 250 during the June 2025 quarter under review compared to Rs 211 in the same period a year ago.
The mobile data consumption on Airtel’s India network increased by 13.4 per cent to 26.9 GB per customer per month.
The customer base of Airtel’s Home Services segment, which includes fixed broadband services, grew 37.7 per cent on YoY basis to 1.09 crore but the ARPU in the segment declined by 6.1 per cent to Rs 537 in June 2025 quarter.
Vittal said that the company’s capex are going into fiber and core networks.
He expressed dissatisfaction with experience on the WiFi services and said that the company is making investment to fix it.
“We are not happy with some of the issues that we’re facing on experience relating to our transport, hygiene, and infrastructure.
“A lot of work is going on there to fix that so that our churn goes down.
“It’s still very good. I would say, industry beating but we still need to do a better job,” he said.
Talking about unlocking monetisation opportunities in the Airtel’s subsidiaries, Bharti Enterprises Joint Managing Director Harjeet Kohli said there is no compulsion to list data centre businesses Nxtra.
He said that the data centre business is expected to continue to grow three times on the topline in the next 2-3 years and may possibly go for listing in the coming years.
Kohli said that Airtel Money is a very strong and mature platform growing at over 30 per cent per annum.
“Airtel Money’s IPO is probably more visible in the future. Whether it’s three quarters or six or nine, I don’t know but it should happen,” he said.
Kohli said Airtel Payments Bank is under licensing guidelines from RBI and the company has to be listed within next 2-3 years.
Consolidated revenue from operations of Bharti Airtel increased by 28.4 per cent to Rs 49,463 crore during the reporting quarter from Rs 38,506.4 crore in the June quarter of the last year.
