Airtel has launched price plans to counter Jio and the company?s current priority is to retain and increase its market share. The company believes its counter plans and network capacity should help achieve this. The company said that, on the positive side, churn has dipped and it has not seen any uptick in MNP (mobile number portability).
The company noted that the introduction of new price plans has led to a dip in both voice and data realization. However, this has been
accompanied by a sharp growth in volumes. The company claims that this shows that usage has started to revert back, which had been hurt due to Jio?s free offer.
85-90% of the new smartphones sold in India are now 4G-compatible. The price point is >Rs4,000. It is awaiting launch of VoLTE feature phone, which could come at lower price point. However, the company believes that price points of these feature phones have to be lower than Rs2,000-2,500 for them to be attractive.
Management suggested Bharti will have the highest data capacity per site post the acquisitions of Tikona (not listed) and Telenor India
(not listed). Bharti has a significant advantage over other incumbent telcos on data capacity and, with the smartphone adoption increasing, is well placed to benefit from overall data growth and visible gains once data
tariffs start stabilising.
