Comments
The country’s largest telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel, said it does not see much need for mobile airwaves at this point, as it has enough to play in the market.
“When you look at our current spectrum holding, we are in a very solid position. We need spectrum to fill a few gaps here and there. Broadly, we don’t see a great need of spectrum at this point in time,” Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (India and South Asia), said in an earnings call.
He said the company was in a better position and had expanded its footprint across the country with its acquisition of more airwaves from Aircel and Videocon.
Airtel was the second largest bidder after Idea Cellular in last year’s spectrum auction (held in March 2015) with total bids of around ₹29,130 crore.
The government fetched its highest ever revenue of ₹1.1 lakh crore from that auction and this year, it is plans to conduct the India’s largest-ever spectrum auction, worth ₹5.66 lakh crore.
Data tariff warCommenting on the expected data tariff war with the entry of Reliance Jio, Vittal said: “If rates come down, it will have an impact on our revenue, but we are determined not to let that happen.”
Vittal said the price of smartphones was a primary barrier in getting more people to use data, added by lack of awareness among masses on the benefits of internet usage. “If you have something which is dramatically useful, people are willing to pay for it,” he said.
However, Vittal ruled out Airtel getting into sale of handsets but said that the company would continue offering bundled data schemes with smartphone-makers such as Micromax, Samsung, Intex and Apple.
He said Airtel had no plans to deploy Voice over Long-Term Evolution as of now. “We are not currently deploying it…we don’t feel the need for it right now,” said Vittal.
The company on Wednesday reported a consolidated net profit of ₹1,462 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, down 31 per cent, from the corresponding quarter last year, mainly due to high expenditure during the period.
However, total revenue rose 8 per cent to ₹25,546 crore during the period, against ₹23,671 crore in the April-June quarter 2015 quarter.
Bharti Airtel s hares closed at ₹372.10 on the BSE on Thursday, down 0.12 per cent from their previous close.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.