Bharti Airtel, a leading telecom operator in India, recently came out with the quarterly results for Q4 FY24. This has allowed us to gauge how the company's 'Homes' business performed during the financial year. The Homes business of the company refers to the fixed-broadband business. Airtel said in a release that Homes business revenue went up by 20% YoY during the quarter. However, the telco did not reveal the actual revenue in the press release, just the growth percentage (note that you can go through the published financial results for a deeper insight into different segment revenues).
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Airtel's Homes Business Customer Base and Cities
Bharti Airtel's Homes business added a total of 1.6 million customers during FY24, and 331,000 of that were added during the last quarter. From 6.04 million customers at the end of Q4 FY23, the user base increased to 7.62 million at the end of FY24. In FY23, Airtel added 1.56 million new customers under its Homes business. So over the last two years, the speed at which Airtel has added new customers remained almost flat.
Airtel said, "We continue to accelerate our homepass rollout on the back of asset light local cable operator partnership model."
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While this is what Airtel said, the truth is, the telco only reached 91 new cities with its Homes business. Back in 2022, Airtel had said that by 2025, it wants to reach 2000 towns with its Xstream Fiber services. But over the last year, the expansion speed has been pretty slow.
To drive momentum for its home broadband services, Airtel launched Airtel Black, a bundled service a few years back. Whether it is a DTH (Direct-to-Home) connection or a postpaid mobile connection that a user is looking for, purchasing it under the Airtel Black service can be fruitful for the customer.