NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel on Thursday reported a consolidated net loss for the April to June quarter at Rs 2,866 crore, amid a bruising tariff battle with rival Reliance Jio.
More worryingly, Airtel's consolidated net debt was Rs 1.16 lakh crore as of June end.
However, the consolidated revenues grew 6.8 per cent to Rs 20,738 crore. Consolidated mobile data traffic at 4,045 petabytes (PBs) in the quarter registered a healthy year-on-year growth of 94 per cent.
India revenues for Q1 FY20 were at Rs 15,345 crore, up by 5.5 per cent on an underlying basis. Mobile revenues witnessed a growth of 3.7 per cent while mobile average revenue per user (ARPU) increased to Rs 129 during the quarter.
Mobile 4G data customers increased by 63.3 per cent to 95.2 million from 58.3 million in the corresponding quarter last year. "We remain obsessed about network experience," said Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO for Airtel India and South Asia.
"As a result, we have re-farmed spectrum from 3G networks to 4G across both the 900 as well as 2100 bands and begun the process of shutting down 3G networks in India. This has enabled us to deliver improved indoor coverage as well as enhance our capacities," he said in a statement.
Bharti Airtel has operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.