Vodafone service revenue up 11.4% in first half of FY14
The firm reported service revenue for the first half at `20,641.9 crore, on the back of increased subscribers and strong data growth
New Delhi: Vodafone India Ltd, India’s second largest telecom company by subscribers, reported an 11.4% growth in service revenue for the first half of the fiscal year, to ₹ 20,641.9 crore, on the back of increased subscribers and strong data growth.
The company reported a subscriber base of 174 million customers for the six months ending 30 September 2014, an increase of 11.8% over the same period last year. The telco now has more than 124,000 total antenna sites, of which around 28,000 are 3G sites.
Vodafone’s rural customer base was 92 million for the period—53% of total customer base. Other key performance indicators reported by the company included average revenue per minute (ARPM) at 49.9 paise and Voice ARPM at 37.3 paise for the quarter ended 30 September.
“With reducing inflationary pressure and improving sentiment after the new government came, we expect the telecoms sector to grow above the GDP rate," Marten Pieters, managing director, Vodafone India, said.
Data enabled the company to withstand seasonal pressures, as was the case for rivals Bharti Airtel Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd. Revenue from data browsing was ₹ 2,552.5 crore for the six-month period, a 65.5% rise over the same period last year, driven mainly by greater smartphone penetration (19.5% of total base). The company now has 33.2 million customers using more than 1MB data, while 3G users nearly doubled to 13.6 million in the six months, contributing nearly 50% to data revenue and volumes.
The company is not listed on the bourses and therefore does not report numbers like net profit.
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