Vodafone Idea expects a reversal in subscriber loss by the end of the financial year, following the tariff hikes implemented in July, 2024.
Vodafone Idea had raised its tariff by 10-24 per cent across all plans, in line with the other major telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.
While the tariff raise resulted in a huge chunk of subscribers migrating to BSNL, the company said that the trend is gradually reversing.
Akshaya Moondra, Chief Executive Officer at Vodafone Idea, said, during the investor call for Q2 FY25, that the subscriber migration reversed quickly from August to November, representing a normal impact of tariff increase.
“I think in some ways we are inching towards the position which was there before the tariff increase. But yes, some loss which has happened during this period will still take some time to unwind, but I think we believe it will happen based on the customer experience, because there is definitely a difference in an experience for a customer who is a high user of either data or voice,” he said.
Moondra added that the telco increased its 4G data capacity has increased by approximately 14 per cent and increased its population coverage approximately 22 million to 1.05 billion over the last six months.
During this quarter, Vodafone added almost 42,000 4G sites. During the last investor’s call, the CEO had talked of bringing 4G sites to 2.1 - 2.2 lakh.
In terms of its 3-year capex plan, Vodafone Idea concluded deals worth ₹30,000 crore with global partners Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung.
Vodafone has set a target of 1.1 billion 4G population coverage by March 2025 and 1.2 billion by September 2025.
In its second quarter results of FY25, the telco’s net loss narrowed by 17 per cent to ₹7,175.9 crore, as against a loss of ₹8,737.9 crore in the same quarter last year. Sequentially, loss widened by 11 per cent.
Revenue from operations grew 2 per cent to ₹10,932 crore in Q2FY25 from ₹10,716 crore in Q2FY24. On a quarterly basis, revenue grew by 4 per cent.