Bharti Airtel’s operating performance improved progressively through the quarter. Smartphone sales (slowdown impacted 4G adoption) are now back to pre-Covid levels. Local and district-level lockdowns continues to cause minor disruptions. However, the management is not seeing any further erosion in its customer base.
Management said that the current tariffs are still at low levels. They have guided for ARPUs to move to Rs200 in the short term and Rs300 in the medium term. Besides tariff hikes, ARPU increase will also be driven by increase in share of 4G subscribers (better mix). Management did not comment on the exact timing for tariff increase. Secondly, the company believes that the current data allowances are way too generous and price architecture needs to