Airtel’s mobile Internet user base increased by around 2.45 million (4.5%) quarter on quarter to 57.36 million from 54.91 million during the quarter ended March 31st, 2017 (Q4 FY17). The telco seems to be slowly recovering from the intense competition after losing around 7 million users in the previous quarter. Airtel also added 5.02 million mobile broadband (3G+4G) users during the quarter, taking the total base to 42.71 million from 37.69 million in Q3FY17. Note that data customers accounted for 21% of Airtel’s overall mobile customer base in Q4 FY17, which dropped from a 23.2% share that mobile customers held in Q4 FY16. The telco’s total customer base stood at 273.64 million during the current quarter, up marginally by 2.9% QoQ. Mobile data consumption also increased significantly: up by 53.29 billion MBs (around 31% QoQ growth) to a total of 225.1 billion MB during the quarter, from 171.81 billion MB in the previous quarter. Airtel seems to have picked up some traction in data usage after Jio launched paid packs.The telco’s mobile consumption rates had dropped drastically in the previous quarter after Jio’s launch. Other mobile usage metrics -Although Airtel was able to add new customers and increase data usage on its network, its Data ARPU (average revenue per user) declined 7% to Rs 162 from Rs 175 in the preceding quarter. The last time that Airtel’s Data ARPU dipped to such low levels was in December 2014. -Average data usage per customer increased significantly to 1,331 MB per customer, up 36.9% from 972 MB last quarter. -Data realisation per MB…
