Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said that while the telecom industry has seen some bit of repair, tariffs continue to be “unsustainably low”, as it exhorted the sector regulator to address the floor price issue “sooner than later”.
In an earnings’ call, Bharti Airtel CEO, India and South Asia, Gopal Vittal, said although the company is by-and-large comfortable with its spectrum holding and has the required headroom, it is keen to have sub-GHz footprint across the country to plug some gaps.
Airtel had, on Monday, reported Q4 loss at Rs 5,237 crore, mainly on account of provisioning for paying statutory dues, while its full year losses ballooned to a record Rs 32,183 crore.
Vittal said the industry has witnessed some repair but emphasised that more needs to be done on tariffs, which are still unsustainably low. “We believe that an ARPU (Average Reveue Per User) of Rs 154 is inadequate to turn a reasonable Return on Capital as a company and remain hopeful that ARPUs will get to Rs 200 in the short term and eventually to Rs 300 which is where it should be for a business like ours. Of course, even at this level
