A senior company official said on Monday that the launch of debt-ridden telecom operator Vodafone Idea’s 5G services will depend on several factors such as use cases, customer demand, competitive dynamics etc.
Ravinder Takar, Managing Director and CEO of Vi, while speaking at the 27th Annual General Meeting said that the promoters of the company have made investments. 4,940 crore and the company is in active discussions with investors to raise funds.
VIL receives spectrum price 18,800 crore, which includes radio waves in the mid band (3,300 MHz band) in 17 priority circles and spectrum in the 26 GHz band in 16 circles for 5G services. The company also secured additional 4G spectrum in three circles of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab.
Adds annual installment liability of fresh spectrum bid 1,680 crore on the company.
“The 5G roll-out will depend on various factors such as how the use cases evolve, demand from customers, capacity requirement as well as competitive dynamics,” Takkar said.
Vi has proposed to appoint Akshay Mundra as CEO and Tacker as non-executive director of the company.
The proposal was placed in the AGM (Annual General Meeting).
Takkar said the company has now acquired spectrum in all frequency bands and further strengthened its 4G spectrum holding with the acquisition of additional radio waves in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab.
Taker said telecom operators have raised tariffs in the past, which has improved margins but the existing mobile services rates are still not sustainable and need to be increased further.
VIL has reported marginal reduction in its consolidated loss: 7,296.7 crore for the June quarter, compared to the year-ago period, as the tariff hike boosted its realisations. Telco’s losses remain low 7,319.1 crore in the year-ago quarter.
VIL’s revenue from operations rises to approx. 10,410 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2022, an improvement of about 14 per cent from the year-ago period.
Its average revenue per user or ARPU – a key monitorable for telecommunications companies – stood at 128 per subscriber for the quarter, as compared to 104 in Q1 FY22. This represents an improvement of 23.4 per cent year-on-year, helped by the tariff hike.
At the end of April-June 2022 quarter, VIL’s total gross debt (excluding lease liabilities and including interest earned but not outstanding) was 1,99,080 crore including deferred spectrum payment obligations of 1,16,600 crore, AGR Liabilities 67,270 crores which are due to the government, and loans from banks and financial institutions 15,200 crores.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has returned a bank guarantee 17,000 crores.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed.
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