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Vodafone Q1 service revenue falls 31% on year amid tariff wars, cheaper data

MUMBAI: Vodafone India’s service revenue fell 31% in the first quarter amid tariff wars and cuts in some charges as India’s No. 2 telco moved to close its merger with third-ranked Idea Cellular by next month.

In what may be its last set of results as Vodafone India, the company said service revenue fell to €955 million (₹7,666 crore) in the three months ended June from €1.38 billion a year earlier. The decline from the preceding quarter was limited to 1.4% as monthly data usage quadrupled to 4.6 GB per user on average — the largest among its regions — “following a steep decline in data prices,” Vodafone said in a statement on Wednesday.

Vodafone, which along with Idea, paid the government dues of over ₹7,200 crore this week, said it expects the merger to close in August, having gone past the earlier deadline of June end. The combined entity, to be India’s largest, will be called Vodafone Idea Ltd. Its CEO will be Balesh Sharma and the telco will remain listed.

“In India, where competition remains intense, we have now received conditional approval from the Department of Telecommunications for the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, which we aim to close before the end of August, allowing us to unlock substantial synergies,” Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao said in the statement.

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