Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL), the third-largest telecom operator in the country, has been struggling to grow its overall mobile subscriber base. However, there's one segment of subscribers that are going up - postpaid. This is, honestly, the only silver linining in the entire results that the telco released for Q1 FY26. Vi reported that its mobile postpaid subscriber base went up from 25.6 million in Q4 FY25 to 26.6 million in Q1 FY26. This is a good sign for the postpaid business because it's a million postpaid users added in the quarter, higher than the numbers reported by the competitors.
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Vodafone Idea's postpaid subscriber base has been growing for more than a year. This is one area where Vi has consistently performed. The subscriber addition has slowed in one or two quarters, but apart from that, the users keep coming. These have to be some enterprise users as well. The good thing about postpaid susbcribers is that they are more loyal than prepaid users and stay for the long-term in the network.
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Vi is continously investing in networks to expand the reach of 4G and is now also focusing on 5G rollout in almost all of its piority circles. The telco has so far launched 5G in 22 cities across 13 circles. The telco had announced previously that it would launch 5G in all the priority circles (17 in total) by August 2025. Whether this will happen or not, we will see. The 4G/5G subscriber base of Vi grew to 127.4 million during the quarter. The growth rate is slow, but in hindsight, it is better than a declining user base. Vi needs to raise more money in order to keep up with the competition, and that doesn't seem to be haappening at the moment.
