Bharti Airtel to Roll Out Pan-India VoLTE Service by the End of March 2018: Gopal Vittal

Leading telecom operator, Bharti Airtel yesterday reported around 75% yearly decline at Rs 367 crore in its first quarter profit from Rs 373 crore in the January-March quarter. The profit was impacted by the price war introduced by Reliance Jio. Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia) today said that the company had done VoLTE trials in 5-6 cities, and the service will reach pan India by the end of March 2018.

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“We have done (VoLTE) trials in 5-6 cities. Towards the end of this fiscal year, we will be taking VoLTE everywhere. The uptake of VoLTE devices will depend on certification…We should be very much national in the coming 6-9 months.” Gopal Vittal spoke to media on the earnings calls.

Earlier this month, Airtel officially announced that they are testing the VoLTE service in five cities of the country, and several smartphone vendors have already pushed an OTA update to some of their phones to support the Airtel VoLTE network.

Airtel’s results for the Q1FY2018 are not that great. Airtel’s consolidated revenue fell 14% to Rs 21,958 crore from a year earlier Its India revenues stood at Rs 17,244 crore, declined by 10.0% Y-o-Y primarily led by a mobile drop of 14.1% Y-o-Y. It said that mobile market remains turbulent in the current quarter as well, due to disruptive pricing by a new operator. However, these are not numbers by any means. Over the last few months, Airtel’s ARPU has decreased due to the free 4G services from Reliance Jio.