Vodafone India Added 22 Million Broadband Users in FY18, Reports 59.8 Million 3G/4G Subscribers

Vodafone India today released its full financial results for the year ended March 31, 2018. In the report, Vodafone stated that its broadband user base has been increased by 22 million in FY18, closing in at 59.8 million 3G/4G subscribers. The country’ second largest telco also announced that its user base been increased to 223 million, up by 6.5% YoY and is operating in the country through a network of close to 139,000 total sites. Out of the total subscriber base, 120 million subscribers are from rural areas. The telco, at the end of March 2018 had 76 million data users- 2G, 3G and 4G, of which 53.5 million use more than 1MB data. It also revealed that the data usage per subscriber grew by 350% in FY18 over FY17 and is now at 5GB per user (only for the users consuming more than 1MB).

Speaking of the financial performance of Vodafone India, the telco’ service revenue is down by 18.9% in FY18 to Rs 34,855 crores. The UK-based telco claims that the drop in revenue is due to the reduction in interconnect usage charges, international termination charge and continuing suppressed pricing in the industry. The telco also reported an EBITDA of Rs 7,766 crores in FY18 and an Operating Free Cash Flow (OFCF) of Rs 1,214 crores.

Vodafone India, during the entire year, gained a Revenue Market Share of 20.9%. The telco’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) stood at Rs 119 in Q4 FY18, which is second to Reliance Jio. It’s also revealed that Vodafone Business Services is now contributing 20% of Service revenues overall.

During FY18, Vodafone also announced its Super VoLTE services. Vodafone VoLTE is now present across major cities in 12 telecom circles of India.

2018 is the year when Vodafone took the Digital Content Space seriously. Vodafone Play app now offers regional content portfolio with more than 5,000 Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Bengali movies. The app also has 10,000+ movies and over 300 Live TV channels, international premium TV shows and original web series across all genres. Vodafone is offering the service free until June 2018.

During the same year, Vodafone India also completed the sale of their standalone tower business to ATC for Rs 38.5 billion. Currently, the telco is the process of securing the necessary regulatory approvals for the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. The merger is expected to complete in June 2018.