Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Monday reported a more than fivefold rise in consolidated profit to ₹1,607 crore for the first quarter ended June 30.
Revenue from operations increased by about 22% to ₹32,805 crore during the reported quarter, boosted by 4G subscriber additions and higher data consumption.
Bharti Airtel's mobile services revenue in India grew 27% to ₹18,220 crore for the first quarter.
Average revenue per user (ARPU)– a key performance indicator in the telecom industry – came in at ₹183 rupees for the quarter, up from ₹146 from a year earlier. ARPU of rivals Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea for the same period was ₹175.7 and ₹128, respectively.
Bharti Airtel said mobile data consumption surged by 16.6% from a year earlier, with consumption per mobile data customer at 19.5 GB per month.
The company had said in November, when it announced tariff hikes, that mobile ARPU needed to be at ₹200 and ultimately at ₹300, for a financially healthy business model.
The company has been raising money to fund its digital ambitions, including developing home broadband, data centres, cloud adoption as it prepares to introduce its next-generation 5G services in the country.
Airtel last week won 5G spectrum worth $5.4 billion in the country's $19 billion auction. The government aims to begin the rollout of 5G - which it says can provide data speeds about 10 times faster than 4G - by October this year.
(With Reuters inputs)
