Airtel ARPU Slips in Q4 FY26, Company Says Tariffs are Broken

Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator, in India, has seen its ARPU (average revenue per user) slip in Q4 FY26. While there’s year-on-year (YoY) growth, the metric which matters a lot more is QoQ (quarter-on-quarter) growth. This time, in years, there has been no QoQ growth for Airtel in the ARPU, instead, the telco’s ARPU has fallen from where it was earlier. In Q3 FY26, Airtel reported an ARPU of Rs 259. In Q4 FY26, this slipped to Rs 257

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The telco said that this is due to a broken pricing architecture. This is not the even the first time Airtel is talking about the tariff structure. Airtel said that compared to the previous quarter, Q4 FY26 had two days less. If it was the same number of days, Airtel would have seen an ARPU increase of Rs 3, the management projected.

Airtel Vice Chairman Comments on ARPU and West Asia Crisis

Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel expressed his disappointment with the ARPU of the telco. Vittal has talked many times about the need for the tariff structure to change in India. Users who consume more should pay more is the architecture Airtel is advocating for.

“We are not happy with our ARPU increase of only ?3 for the quarter. Part of this issue was linked to the West Asia crisis and (its impact on) international roaming revenues. But we are now determined to double down on all our levers on ARPU and grow and accelerate the pace,” Vittal said at the earnings call of Bharti Airtel for Q4 FY26.

Airtel’s ARPU is still the highest. The telco will deinfitely want to go for a tariff hike to reach the Rs 300 ARPU figure as soon as possible. Apart from that, the telco sees a great opportunity in upgrading users from prepaid to postpaid services for boosting ARPU. Airtel said that it added 0.8 million users in the postpaid segment during the quarter. The number is growing, but is staying steady at this pace.