Bharti Airtel has clearly indicated a strong resurgence from the recent past, with the telecom network beating Reliance Jio in terms of the average usage by the consumers, and that is not only with the data usage but also with the average call time in minutes. This was quite expected, given how Airtel was showing a lesser gap in the average revenue per user (ARPU) every quarter, and the last quarter has been better in terms of usage, with the gap for ARPU getting even more narrower. The ARPU is at Rs. 123, which is just a little lesser than Rs. 126.2 of Reliance Jio, while here are the numbers for the usage on both the networks.
The first quarter of 2019, i.e. from January to March 2019, has seen the increase of data usage by about 4.9%, with the new average usage being at 11.04 GB per user, which is quite a jump from the 10.5GB per user that was in the previous quarter. In comparison, Reliance Jio reported an average data consumption of 10.9GB per user, and this is after the network was leading in terms of data usage in the previous quarter, i.e. October to December 2018.
Now, for the call statistics, Bharti Airtel has posted a big improvement here with the average of 858 minutes from the 726 minutes average in the previous quarter, and in comparison, Reliance Jio reported 823 minutes of voice consumption the same quarter, losing to Airtel in both the important aspects that stand as a backbone for the growth of a telecom network.
In terms of the revenue, Bharti Airtel has reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 107.2 crore during the January-March quarter, up 24.36% compared to the preceding quarter, on the back of a one-time gain of Rs 2,022 crore.
To take a larger look at how things have rolled for Bharti Airtel in the last couple of quarters, the entry of Reliance Jio in the telecommunications market in India did make most of the network providers to roll out newer strategies in order to stay competitive while offering the best network quality and make the additional services better at the same time.
While users started choosing one network over the other for the primary calling and data usage, profitability was taking a hit and the incumbent operators had to set a minimum recharge for every user in order to keep their SIM card active. While for the shorter term, the networks like Bharti Airtel lost a number of subscribers but that resulted in better ARPU and the primary focus was on offering services to loyal users. Better the ARPU, better it reflects in the network services provided by the carriers, and that reflects here for how Bharti Airtel has been tremendously improving their network.
The network strength, the coverage, and the penetration have been important factors for Bharti Airtel to pick themselves up over the big competitor Reliance Jio and the implementation of technologies such as LTE 900 MHz, and the services like Airtel Thanks by offering to help users with network betterment in their localities have kept the users to stick with their network provider rather than jumping to the competitive networks.
