Truce in telecom

But profitability is still some way off

For the fourth quarter of financial year 2018-19, the most keenly watched metric in the results of the telecom service provider companies, was their average revenue per user (Arpu). It rose to Rs 123 for Bharti Airtel and Rs 104 for Vodafone Idea, but fell to Rs 126 for Reliance Jio. Arpu is defined as the revenue of the operator divided by its subscriber base. A decline means each new subscriber is adding less to the revenue of the company. So while the company will keep on adding to its capital cost at the same rate to service the new