Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Margaret, the moderator for your conference call. Welcome to the Vodafone Idea Limited conference. For the duration of this presentation, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. After the presentation, a question- and- answer session will be conducted. We have with us today Mr. Ravinder Takkar, MD and CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited, and Mr. Akshaya Moondra, CFO of Vodafone Idea Limited, along with other key members of the senior management on this call. I want to thank the management team on behalf of all the participants for taking valuable time to be with us. Given that the senior management is on this conference call, participants are requested to focus on the key strategic and profit questions to make sure that we make good use of the senior management's time.
I must remind you that the discussions on today's call may include certain forward-looking statements and must be viewed therefore in conjunction with the risks that the company faces. With this, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ravinder Takkar. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Margaret. On behalf of Vodafone Idea, I welcome all participants to this earnings call. On 12 November, our board of directors adopted the unaudited results for the quarter ending September 30, 2021. The detailed press release, quarterly report, and unaudited financials have been uploaded on our website, and I hope you had a chance to go through the same. Let me start with discussing our ongoing strategic initiatives along with the operational highlights for the quarter. I will then hand over to Akshaya to share details on the company's financial performance. Before that, let me talk about the reform package announced by the government. The central government on 15 September announced a comprehensive reform package to address the severe crisis in the telecom industry.
We welcome the announcement and appreciate the government's recognition of not just the financial stress in the sector, but also our contribution in keeping the country connected, especially during the pandemic. These reforms will provide immediate relief to the financial sector, to the financial stress in the sector and reduce regulatory burden on telecom operators. They will further promote healthy competition, protect interest of consumers, ensure liquidity, and encourage investments. The announced measures will enable investable funds in the hands of telecom operators for fresh CapEx deployment in building long-term digital infrastructure. With competition and consumer choice, the reform will provide impetus to inclusive development and universal broadband access to all Indians. The moratorium of next four years on all government dues will enable us to further boost our 4G coverage and capacity and provide deep rural connect.
It will also allow Vodafone Idea to invest in new technologies and services, including 5G, when the ecosystem is ready and spectrum is made available at reasonable prices. Through this landmark decision, government has truly demonstrated their commitment to ensuring a healthy market structure of at least three private players. Structural reforms, including rationalization of AGR to exclude non-telecom revenues, rationalization of bank guarantees, removal of penalty and interest on penalty on delay in license fee and spectrum usage charge payments, a predictable timeline for spectrum auction, supporting spectrum sharing, permission for 100% FDI under automatic rules, among other things, are all steps in the right direction to ease the burden on telcos. These reforms will promote ease of doing business in the country by abolishing some of the archaic processes of telecom business operations.
Promoting digitization of KYC process, self-declaration for equipment import, and other procedural reforms will be a key to smooth business operations and faster delivery of services to customers. In summary, this historic government announcement will go a long way in making the mobile industry sustainable, allowing the existing telecom operators to invest and compete effectively, thereby supporting the digital needs of 1.3 billion Indians and millions of small, medium, and large enterprises. Moving on to our key strategic initiatives. The first one being focused network investments. We continue to follow a focused approach to investments biased towards our priority circles, which contribute over 94% of our revenue. This helps us in utilizing our CapEx effectively while ensuring that we continue to offer superior customer experience in these areas. We continue to rapidly upgrade our 3G network to 4G.
We closed 9,600 3G sites during this quarter, while we added around 10,800 4G FDD sites, mainly through refarming of 2G and 3G spectrum. The refarming of 3G spectrum to 4G on majority of sites in various cities has substantially enhanced the GigaNet 4G capacity in those cities. Our data capacity is now 2.8x compared to September 2018, just before the merger. Overall broadband site count stood at 450,481, and this coverage has already crossed the benchmark of 1 billion Indians last year. It remains our constant endeavor to be the best 4G network in the country. I'm happy to announce that VIL has consistently been leading the league tables on both data and voice for several months now. Vi powered by GigaNet is India's fastest mobile network as awarded by Ookla.
We also have the highest-rated voice quality as per the country's TRAI MyCall app data for nine out of 12 months between November 2020 and September 2021. We continue to future-proof our network. We have the advantage of having the latest 4G equipment and technologies which are capable of upgrading to 5G. In addition, we continue to deploy several 5G-ready technologies such as massive MIMO, VSR, cloudification of core, among others. During the quarter, we also conducted 5G trials on government-allocated spectrum bands of 26 GHz and 3.5 GHz, both in Pune and Gandhinagar. We have demonstrated peak speeds of 4.2 Gbps on 26 GHz band and 1.5 Gbps on 3.5 GHz band. We also tested E-band backhaul spectrum, where we demonstrated a peak speed of 9.8 Gbps.
We have forged partnership with several technology leaders, ecosystem players, and Indian startups for developing a range of use cases relevant for Indian enterprises and consumers, such as smart cities, remote healthcare, remote education, smart automotive, drone-based surveillance, motion capture, gaming, etc., to demonstrate effective applications of 5G in India. We have partnered with several technology leaders and innovators like Ericsson, Nokia, L&T Smart World & Communication Business, Athonet, Preclabs, and Vizzbee to develop exciting 5G use cases and are confident that many new cases will emerge over the coming months and years. Moving on to market initiatives. Our unified brand Vi turned a year old in September 2021 and continues to garner good reception, building brand affinity across all customer segments in the country.
Vi was recognized as the buzziest brand during IPL 2021, and also won the Gold and Silver Award in the Indian Digital Marketing Awards 2021. We continue to improve ARPU through the adoption of 4G and UL plans by our customers. We have taken several tariff interventions in the last couple of months, such as increasing the entry price on non-UL prepaid plans to INR 79 from INR 49 in a phased manner during this quarter. We have also rolled out hikes in some of our postpaid plans. All these initiatives are ARPU accretive, benefits of which have flowed in this quarter results and likely to accrue into next quarter as well. I will take this opportunity to again remind everyone that despite all the recent positive developments on tariffs, tariff hikes remain critical to continued revival of this sector. On business services.
Business service continues to be one of our key focus area. In Vi Business, as we progress on our journey from telco to techco, we continue to strengthen our partnerships with our customers with a range of new offerings like Vi Integrated IoT, Managed SIP, Vi Cloud Firewall Service, and Vi Business Plus bundled mobility offering. We are the first and the only telecom operator to provide Managed SIP service in India. Our cloud telephony solution is helping SMEs to automate and enhance their customer interactions with features like auto receptionist, lead management, and others. In the increasingly hybrid working world, Vi Business Plus mobility bundling solutions are enabling today's mobile workforce to connect, communicate, collaborate, and do a lot more with their postpaid plans.
In partnership with Google Cloud India, Vi Business Plus now offers Google Workspace solutions for SMEs and startups in order to help them strike the right balance between business objectives and employee flexibility. The new and emerging cloud and IoT services are central to our business services growth strategy. We continue to derive tremendous synergies from our relationship with Vodafone Group, who are a global leader in the IoT segment. We continue to identify and leverage new opportunities in the IoT space to further strengthen our IoT portfolio, such as our integrated IoT solutions for enterprises, which is a pioneer offer in the market. We have started this journey of integrated IoT with propositions of smart infrastructure, smart mobility, and smart utilities to address the needs of these industries. We'll keep adding to the list.
We are partnering with the best and most innovative technology providers to test transformative IT use cases like smart city, Industry 4.0, and healthcare. Our award-winning digital experience offerings, such as the Vi App, Vi Business Wireline, and Vi Business Mobility, are allowing organizations to manage from anywhere and at any time with least manual intervention. Our enterprise digital platform for Vi Business Mobility has been recognized by a global jury at ICMG Architecture Excellence Awards 2020 for having the best customer centricity and architectural design. Vi Business has been chosen as a preferred partner of choice for IoT, SIP trunking, telecom carrier mobile access, and managed mobility services in the CIO Choice 2021 on the basis of an existing Pan-India CIO referral voting process that spans across industry verticals. The next strategic initiative is driving partnerships and digital revenue streams.
We continue to partner with content providers to promote new and engaging content through Vi Movies & TV. Our vast content library, coupled with differentiated data benefits in the industry, has led to a winning proposition for both us and our customers. At the starting of the year, we had announced a partnership with Disney+ Hotstar to make sure our consumers get access to IPL and T20 World Cup. We had announced post our last quarterly results that we will be launching a music service with some very exciting features. You should see that coming out very, very soon. We also have some very exciting propositions lined up in other categories like gaming, education, skilling, and health. While on one side, all these propositions would help us build our digital community, we also have a pipeline of projects to enable monetization of digital traffic.
In a recent initiative, we launched Vi Movies & TV content on the Vi App. With this integration, Vi users can watch content directly on the Vi App rather than downloading additional apps. We have seen considerable growth in monthly active users over the last few months, and we should see this further accelerating in the coming quarters on the back of a strong pipeline of digital propositions we have developed. Vi is thus committed to delivering the best-in-class services to all their subscribers and bridging the digital divide that separates urban from rural. We will continue to focus on our platform capabilities to offer a deeper integration with our partners for a differentiated experience, create monetization opportunities, and truly become an integrated digital service provider.
Lastly, on our cost optimization exercise, we have already achieved approximately 80% of the targeted annualized cost savings of INR 40 billion. Moving on to other highlights for the quarter. Revenue for the quarter was INR 94.1 billion, an improvement of 2.8% quarter-over-quarter, supported by the gradual resumption of economic activity post the severe second wave of COVID, which had negatively impacted us during quarter one. The subscriber base decline was much lower at 2.4 million. The subscriber base now stands at 253 million. We continue to witness improving trends in 4G subscribers with a healthy addition of 3.3 million during this quarter, taking the overall subscriber base to 116.2 million. Overall operating momentum improved with higher gross additions and lower churn compared to last quarter.
ARPU also saw sequential growth of 5.3% and now stands at INR 109. A quick update on other developments. On the AGR matter, as you are aware, we had filed a review petition in the Supreme Court, clearly indicating that the intent is not to challenge the judgment of the court, but to seek corrections and damages due to manifest errors. The matter is currently pending hearing. On fundraising, the announcement of the government reform package is a significant positive development, alleviating several investor concerns, including the government intention to have at least three private players in India and no payout towards the government dues during the next four years. We believe there will be renewed interest from investors. We are also in the process of upgrading our business plan. Once it's finalized, we will make suitable disclosures on fundraising.
We expect to conclude this exercise during this fiscal year. Now with that, I hand over to Akshay, who will share the financial highlights for the quarter.
Thanks Ravinder. A very good afternoon to participants from India and a good morning or evening as applicable to overseas participants. Firstly, our revenue for the quarter improved by 2.8% compared to last quarter, supported by gradual resumption of economic activity post-second wave of COVID. Adjusted for Ind AS 116 impact, EBITDA was INR 15.6 billion for the quarter.
There were one-offs of INR 1.5 billion in quarter, primarily in other expenses, which were mainly on account of bad debt recoveries, where collections which were impacted because of lockdown in previous quarter were collected and also some old receivables were collected and the related provisions were written back. Adjusted for one-offs, EBITDA of INR 14.2 billion was higher compared to INR 12.8 billion in Q1 on account of higher revenue and incremental cost optimization, which was partially offset by increase in customer acquisition costs due to higher gross additions during the quarter and other inflationary cost increases, including annual pay revisions. CapEx spend was INR 13 billion in this quarter. With this H1 FY 2022 CapEx stands at INR 22.4 billion.
The gross debt as of September 30, 2021 was INR 1,947.8 billion, comprising of deferred spectrum payment obligations of INR 1,086.1 billion, AGR liability of INR 634 billion that are due to the government, and debt from banks and financial institutions of INR 227.7 billion. The cash and cash equivalents were at INR 2.5 billion. As a result, net debt at the end of the quarter stood at INR 1,945.3 billion. As covered by Ravinder in his opening remarks, the government reforms package is a significant positive development. We have opted for the deferment of spectrum and AGR dues payable over next four years. This will result in deferment of INR 147.3 billion payable annually towards spectrum acquired through auction till October 2016.
For the four years, this amounts to deferment of INR 589.1 billion. For the AGR dues, we are in discussions with the DoT to determine the final amount in line with the Supreme Court judgment. Further, there is an option to convert the interest arising from such deferment into equity. We are evaluating this. We'll be reverting on our decision on upfront conversion of interest into equity by the deadline of January 2022. We thus have no government dues payable over the next four years towards spectrum and AGR, except for spectrum installments pertaining to March 2021 auction, which will start in FY 2024. This will provide the needed liquidity to enable us to make further investments.
We are also in discussion with banks and investors for further debt and equity funding for investment, as well as for repayment of bonds maturing in this financial year. We'll be providing more details on these when the discussions are concluded. With this, I hand over the call back to Margaret and open the floor to questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Anyone who would like to ask a question, please press star and one at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is on the line of Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah thanks for the opportunity. First is, you added more than 3,000 towers this quarter, which is the highest you've seen since the merger. Can you explain what happened this quarter? Also if you can share your thoughts on the tower contract renewals, what percentage of your tower contracts are coming up for renewal in second half as well as FY 2023, and if there is a potential for cost savings from these renewals?
Thank you Kunal. I'll take the first question. Actually, the tower increases, there are two reasons for it. One, of course, we had incremental 4G sites that have come up, which you may have also seen the broadband sites which have increased. Also, as we were going through the integration process earlier on, and we were developing our grid for our network, generally speaking, we always have this case where we give some tenancies to exit because there were overlaps. Some of them, over time, we continue to say we will not exit because the way the grid works out over a period of time.
Some of the increases that you see are as a result of us taking away some of those exits that we had earlier planned, because the way that our network grid has developed and the way our traffic has developed. This would explain the tower increases. It is not an exceptional number in this particular quarter. I think it's more related to just the way we have been doing businesses. In some cases this time around, we had some exits which we had planned, which we have decided that we want to keep, the way the traffic has developed. In regards to tower contracts, I will pass this on to Akshaya to respond to Kunal.
Kunal, I will not be able to give you an exact number of the tenancies which are coming up for renewal. It is right that as far as Indus Towers is concerned, there is a bulk of tenancies which will come up for renewal at the beginning of FY 2023, and these do offer an opportunity for further optimization of our costs.
Yeah o kay. Just a follow-up on the first one. So is there any increase in your coverage or it's just that some exits which you are looking to do haven't been done and that's why we are seeing an increase? Like, you can just explain it better.
I would say that the exits, it's not that the exits have not materialized, and they will not be done later. I think we have chosen not to exit some of those sites. That is in plan with our current network planning, so those will stay. I don't think that these sites that we're talking about provide a significant change in the overall network coverage. Our 4G coverage continues to be over 1 billion population of the country. I think that has certainly been maintained. I don't think these particular sites that you're talking about provide a significant change in the overall coverage.
Sure o kay. Thanks. Second one is on MNP trends that you've seen since September, like TRAI announced some caps on MNP offers, and our checks indicate that they were implemented starting middle of September. Have you seen any reduction in attrition from the competition and any benefits accruing to you from the same, from the MNP caps?
Yeah i think, Kunal, you may have noticed that several weeks ago, the TRAI came out with, let's say a review of a policy or actually an existing policy, which they reminded everybody in regards to enforcement of an existing regulation which says that there needs to be a level playing field for MNP as well as new acquisitions. I think those regulations exist essentially to make sure that there is no discrimination between a customer who is new to category in terms of the offers that are given to them versus customers who is porting or doing mobile number portability. Obviously, you want to make sure that they are given same offers and no discrimination is done just because a customer is porting.
This is an existing policy that TRAI has reminded everybody again. They have said that they will enforce this rigorously. We believe that is the right policy and should be enforced. We in many ways appreciate the reminder that the TRAI has given on this particular policy. I think we were seeing some fairly aggressive offers on the MNP front earlier in the market, which certainly have become less aggressive and are much more in line with the policy that exists. We have seen some portability numbers which have reduced as a result of that, and some of the aggressive offers that were being made have certainly come down.
Great. Ju st one last question, if I can. Regarding the tariff hike which you've taken in second quarter, INR 49 plan and corporate, how much of the benefit is already accrued and, how much more can we expect in first quarter?
Akshaya, do you wish to answer that?
Kunal, it is difficult to kind of quantify this, but I would say that a large part of the benefit of this tariff increase has come into this quarter. There will be some spillover which will also come in the next quarter. Largely it is reflecting in the current quarter.
How is the consumer behavior been? Have you seen an increase in churn like last time you'd done this?
No actually, Kunal, on this particular one, we have seen a reduction in churn, as you've seen, compared to last quarter. Predominantly because I think these are smaller actions and in many ways they are not the wider, broader tariff hikes that we have been talking about. Overall we saw churn actually reduce in this particular quarter compared to last time around, although there was an impact of COVID, the second wave as well. It's hard to exactly say where it will settle. Certainly this quarter the churn number has been lower.
Understood t hat's it from my side. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vineet Mangal from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity. My question is like-
Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Mangal. May I request you to come on the handset mode, please?
Okay I will. Hello, am I audible now?
This is clear. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. I just want to, you know, ask, like, very not related to the finances. Like, what happened to the music streaming services which you said that you are going to launch?
Vineet, as I mentioned in my opening comments, it's a matter of only a few days away. We have done some very interesting things, and I think the offer will be quite exciting, so you will see it very, very soon. Please stay tuned.
I'm just like a retail investor. I'm not from any institution or like big analyst. Just that I can see like the reputation of the company is not like very good as when you see in the market. Like the You Broadband, like, in the starting of the year, like I can see, very good marketing strategy was going on, very good plans was going on, but now I don't see any articles from any You Broadband related. You are not planning to, you know, expand it to other cities, tier two cities or like maybe in later stage?
Vineet, I'm not really sure if I can comment on your observations about the reputation not being very good and so on, so maybe it's something a discussion we can take offline. Certainly, the intent of this conference call is to not talk about the coverage expansion of You Broadband, but maybe we're happy to take that question for you offline. Also, I think it might be worthwhile clarifying because I think it was said that you are from a company called Edelweiss. It might be worth clarifying whether you are associated with them or was that a mistake made in your introduction?
Okay. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities, please go ahead with your question.
Hello can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you now.
Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, thank you for taking my question, and thanks for taking my question. I have a few of them. First, on the data customer side, you know, if I look at the total data customer, it has broadly remained flattish ever since our merger. Broadly, we have been able to capture the 2G 3G data users who are converting into 4G because our 4G continues to grow. The overall data customer growth still remains muted or flattish for the last three years, which also indicates that we are losing some customers who are directly moving from a 2G voice to a 4G. What's our plan here to grow the overall data customer along with the growing 4G customer?
Sanjesh, I'm not sure I really fully understand the question. Our data customers are
Close to 136 million we got, which used to be 140 million even at the time of merger. The 4G has grown. We were at 80s, now we are at 116. The overall data customers still remain flattish for us.
No, no. I think so, Sanjesh, the strategy of the company is really to move customers from any. If they were using a small amount of data on 2G, because 2G is obviously not designed for data usage. The idea is to move them over to 4G and charge them the 4G traffic rates and higher ARPU and so on. That is the strategy that we are working towards. As you have noted, we see more and more every quarter that strategy to be working and overall 4G subscriber base increasing. That is the stated strategy and we will continue to do that part.
Obviously from a customer acquisition perspective, converting our existing customers who are currently using 2G into 4G and keeping them within the family, within our company is our topmost attempt, and we attempt to do that. More and more of those we can migrate, the better it is because these are customers who are already associated with our brand, have loyalty to our brand, like the experience that they get potentially on 2G, maybe on 3G, and keeping them in 4G, and they tend to obviously will be the lower churn customers as well. This is a stated strategy, and we will see more and more of that as we continue to go forward.
Hopefully, obviously we do acquire new customers as well, but overall, the intent is to grow the 4G customer base.
Got it but a nytime sooner, do we expect the total data customer to start growing in line with our competition, who are able to now and suddenly grow the total data customer along with the 4G? Or we are still some time away to see that?
I mean, it's I think that is our attempt, Sanjesh, to keep on growing that. As you would have seen over the last few quarters, we are accelerating on that space. Our endeavor is to continue to accelerate as we build more and more capacity and capability.
Got it. Got it.
Sanjesh, if I may add, I think as we invest into covering a higher population, that will definitely be one of the triggers for increasing the data subscribers.
No, we have already crossed 1 billion coverage now on 4G, right? That means we should be covering a large part in our focused circle. I think coverage thing, right now it's fixed for us to keep growing. Is that understanding right?
I mean, we were significantly investing in coverage of 4G earlier. For the last year or so, we have not invested so much in 4G coverage. It is our intention to invest in 4G coverage going forward also.
Got it.
I said that is only one of the triggers, which will also kind of, make that possible. Anyway, Ravinder has answered the other part of your question, but I just wanted to add that this would be one main trigger for, increasing the data subscribers.
Got it. Yeah. Another similar kind of a trend. Our minutes decline is faster than our subscriber decline. That means the customer engagement is lower on the network. What am I missing here in terms of understanding? Because the customer continues to pay us, but the engagement levels are declining. That means they are using more of the secondary SIM which they already have, or how should we see this trend? Because this trend has been persistent now for already a few quarters.
Sanjesh, on that particular topic, there are, as we said overall, the customers that we report, which are 4G UL customers, those continue to increase. They tend to have higher usage, not only of minutes but of data as well. I think there is a secular trend that is taking place in that direction. Now, what we also notice at times is that I think generally there is also, 4G customers tend to also use data more and spend time using data. Sometimes they are using data apps to make voice calls as well and so on. Overall, I would say that the biggest indicator to look at is the growth of 4G customer base.
The other indicator to look at is overall the growth of engagement that you're seeing on 4G data usage, for example. There you will see that on a year-on-year basis, we have seen data consumption jump by 27%. Then while minutes have declined as you said, it is not really an indication of engagement. I think engagement is really overall customer base increasing, payments of course coming through as well as usage of data or minutes that continue to take place. There are clearly other mechanisms by which data or voice minutes go through some apps and other things. Overall, there is also a change in use of some of that technology as well.
Any other question, Mr. Jain?
Yeah. I got two questions. One on the 5G trial, Ravinder, can you just elaborate on how the 5G trial has been for us in general and for the industry, what the observations have been on the various bands. How much is India ready for this 5G. This debate on indigenous or disaggregated versus bundled network. If you can just share with us some thoughts through your 5G trial or touching upon each of these aspects, that will be very useful. One related question, on the backhaul you made an interesting observation on the E-band and V-band.
Now, does this really solve a problem where the fiber requirement in the future, even on the 5G, assuming these bands are allocated to us to use for backhaul, do you think can be a credible solution for the 5G?
Sanjesh, I'll start with the last part first. Yes, absolutely. This is the reason why we did these tests on the E-band spectrum that we talked about. It is absolutely a credible solution and certainly something that can be replaced. Hence we are encouraging in the TRAI consultation that is starting on spectrum to really take a very close look at these bands. That's why we ask for these bands to be given as part of the trials and certainly we see that as an alternative to fiber. That's the last part of your question. On 5G, as I mentioned in my opening statement, in two locations, we have set up a standalone 5G network.
We're using the 26 GHz as well as 3.5 GHz spectrum, which has been allocated to us. I will say that from a speed perspective, purely speed, we've been able to demonstrate very, very high speed. The speeds were mentioned in my opening comments. I think that one part we've been able to show that, within India we can deliver those type of speeds and latency and so on, which I think is very, very positive. I think the bigger question and the more important question is what exactly and what specific use cases will be much more relevant in India.
From there, again, I mentioned in my opening comments, several partnerships and alignments that we've done, not only from technology part, technology suppliers, but to also other Indian startups and so on, in that entire gamut to come up with several areas of use cases that we are currently testing. We will be showcasing actually many of these use cases in the coming weeks. You may get a chance to hear more about the outcomes that are coming out of that, which I think will give us a very good idea of what the capabilities in the 5G space and what use cases will apply in India. I think you will see much more information coming out, in regards to that.
I think the last part of your question was around sort of the standards and Open RAN. We believe we absolutely support Open RAN. We believe Open RAN is an alternative in the industry for breaking down different parts of the network and building that in a best of breed kind of a manner. I think this is a global effort that has taken place in many countries. This has been done. We are of course in close contact with our shareholders in Vodafone Group, who are leaders in this space and developing very much the technology. We believe this is overall the future of open networks to come, especially in 5G, which will enable that going forward.
No, have you tested any indigenous or right now the testing is on the standard equipment?
No, we are testing several things, but we are not willing to announce or we're not able to announce it, that announcements today, no.
Okay. The testing will also include some of these, indigenous or disaggregated kind of an equipment along with the standard ones.
We are supporters of the Open RAN, you know, network piece, which does include different elements rather than just an end-to-end provider.
Got it. Just one last question before I end this. Can you give some sense on the tariff hike? Where are we? What is stopping us? You know, why now we have been talking about the tariff hike. You did mention about fundraise by end of fiscal that gives us a clear roadmap for us. Can you just elaborate on the tariff hike side as well?
Yeah. Sanjesh, as I said, some activity on the tariff hike has already started to happen, which again, I mentioned and has been talked about in some of the earlier questions as well. I can tell you that, you know, you will not find anybody more vocal about the fact that we do need tariff hikes in the country. We've said it in my opening comments. I said that earlier on as well. I believe the time for tariff hikes is certainly approaching and my hope is that as the industry, especially after this government reform package has been announced and the government has taken these very, very significant steps to shore up the industry, that tariff hikes, which are the next important step, will also take place soon.
I think for us, particularly as a company, we have said that we will not shy away from raising tariffs. If we are going to raise it, we have to do it when it is the right time for our company and our customers, and it's something that we obviously watch very closely, although we of course don't have anything to announce today.
Got it. Thanks for answering all my questions patiently and best of luck for the future.
Thanks, Sanjesh.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I hope I'm clearly audible.
Yes, sir, you are.
I have two questions. One is with respect to the offers that some of your rivals have recently come out with to lure new 2G users to 4G, right? Whether it's a subsidized device or whether it's a cashback scheme on various devices purchased by a new smartphone user, what sort of impact are we seeing on our base as far as the upgrades from 2G to 4G go? Secondly, is it possible for you to help us understand the split of spectrum across technologies, basically the liberalized spectrum?
Ravinder, I heard that you said in the earnings call, in the beginning that most of the spectrum that was earlier in 3G has now been refarmed to 4G, and you have deployed the requisite FDD sites also. Is it possible to help us with the number in terms of percentage of the liberalized spectrum that is being used for 4G right now? Thank you.
I think, I mean, Vivek, I can answer the question. The second one is very straightforward, which is, all 4G spectrum is liberalized. There is no 4G spectrum that is by default. I think 4G spectrum, when used for 4G, has to be liberalized. I don't think there is a percentage there that we can say that is non-liberalized. I'm not really sure. Maybe I misunderstood your question. Then of course bulk of our spectrum is already liberalized as well. There are a few slots which are not administratively were given to us, but bulk of our spectrum is fully liberalized and of course used for 4G. That was the answer to your second question.
In regards to the first question that you talked about, I'm assuming that you are referring to the phone launches and the cashback offers. First of all, I have to say that this is very early days. Those offers have just come out in the market. It's too early to say if there is any impact at all of those.
The other comment that I would make is that the, I think in general, on the devices itself, it just seems to me like a model for financing, because the way that we have done the math, we can see that there's a price of device and then there's some financing costs associated with it, and you can buy it on installments, or you can buy the device upfront. Frankly, this is today, at least in the market, this is no different than what we offer today. In the market, we've been offering for a while, financing of devices. And it's available through third party financing companies that we've worked with very closely that we have tie-ups with. And we also do it for many, many devices, so it doesn't have to be one device.
We do it for a gamut of devices. The customer's choice is very much there. Also in our case, we do it not only for new devices, but we also do it for refurbished devices and the models that are there. I think we offer a significant amount of choice to customers in that space. Certainly, what we see in the market today doesn't seem to be anything different at this time. Although, as I said, it's too early to say if there's going to be any impact of those deals. It's just not enough time yet.
Vivek, if I can add to the response on the spectrum details. Just to be clear, we have a total spectrum of 1768 MHz, out of which there is only 30 MHz which is administered spectrum. Almost all the spectrum is liberalized. Now, out of that, we have got about 195 MHz. Sorry, 195 into two in 2100 band. Most of it is now being used for 4G. In some cases, it is also that within a certain circle some will be used for 3G and some cities may have been refarmed to 4G. It is not that you can quantify. The direction is that 3G will, over a period of time as the subscribers in every area keep on reducing, this will be refarmed to 4G.
I think that is only a matter of time. The way to look at it would be that if we kind of assume that till the time 2G is there, a single carrier of 2G, which is about 10 MHz per circle in 22 circles, roughly 220 MHz would be required for 2G. The rest of it, including whatever is being currently used for 3G, already is or will be available for 4G.
Right. No, understood. Akshaya, that's very clear. That was my question. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Samuel Chen from AllianceBernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you guys hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Good. Okay. Thank you for your opportunity. Just two questions on my side. I think the industry definitely need a proof, improvement. This is another question about the ARPU. What I'm really curious is that we've been hearing multiple operators basically waiting for other operators to raise ARPU. Recently one of your competitors has somewhat loosened their stance and mentioned that they are looking to achieve a certain level of ARPU by a certain timeline. It's been my understanding that Vodafone Idea will more likely to follow if your competitors are raising ARPU first, or would you be more likely to take the first step? Thank you.
Well, I mean, I think we've been fairly clear earlier that we are not in a situation where we say we will only follow or we will be always the first one to do. I think we will. We believe when it is the right time for our company and for our customer base, we will make that tariff increase. As has been evident, we have been slowly doing that, as mentioned earlier in my opening comments, both slightly for prepaid customers as well as for some of the postpaid customers, both in the family plan area as well as in the enterprise area. I don't think it is a question of whether we will follow somebody. I think we will do it when it is the right time for our company.
I think what others decide to do or what they choose to do, obviously it's in their prerogative and it's, you know, it's difficult for me to comment on their plans.
Okay. Thank you very much, Noe. The second question is on the 5G spectrum. Obviously the previous reserve price was very high. I think TRAI is currently review the price at the moment. Would you guys be able to discuss what your 5G spectrum strategy is, let's say if the price stay the same or if the price goes for a significant discount? Just kind of general comment would be great. Thank you.
No, I think if the price remains the same, I expect that the outcome of any spectrum auction will be the same as last time, which is the spectrum goes, you know, unallocated, and there are no buyers for that spectrum. I assume that the price will have to decline. We've been saying, as everybody else, you know, externally have been saying as well, that the prices are too high and they need to come down. Look, our bidding strategy and how much spectrum we get will of course be dependent on the pricing. As of now, the pricing in the market that's available, unless we come out with new pricing from TRAI, we believe it's too expensive and hence the auctions have not been successful earlier.
Okay. Thank you very much. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Bansal from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. Just wanted to check if we need to provide any additional bank guarantees for availing moratorium on the spectrum dues. If not, what happens to the existing bank guarantees that we have submitted for spectrum dues?
Aditya, we, in fact, the Cabinet, you know, reform package is, you know, actually going to reduce the number of bank guarantees that the government holds. There is clearly a reduction and reconciliation where they will bring down on the performance-based guarantees. The amount will come down to 20% of what it is today. That process is already starting. On the spectrum dues itself, because there are no spectrum payments to be made for the next four years, there is essentially no requirement for bank guarantees until a period of time that those spectrum dues are due, which will be before the fourth year.
The requirements today are that, you know, the general bank guarantees need to be given a year prior to when the payments are due. Since the moratorium is for four years, we believe that there is no bank guarantee requirement for the next certainly three years till the payments become due. We expect those bank guarantees would be returned as well, the spectrum bank guarantees to be returned as well. The amount of the bank guarantee when they have to be paid will depend, of course, on the spectrum installments, and that of course depends on the amount that you have to pay basis the choices that you make in regards to the conversion of interest into equity and so on.
I think those decisions will drive the quantum, but we don't believe that there is any bank guarantee requirement for spectrum for the next three years until the moratorium period comes to an end.
Thanks a lot. Si r, have we heard anything from DoT on the return of the bank guarantees, or is it our understanding on the scene?
Yeah, no, I think they are working on it and they're progressing it. It's a big, you know, we've been giving bank guarantees for so long. There's so many spectrum, so many banks and all the different circles, and I think it's a monumental task for them to reconcile and return those appropriately. I'm sure that those processes will start very soon.
Another one was we have large debt repayments which are coming due over the next few months. What are the options available with the company to service them? Could you update on that?
Sure. Could you please come again? Yeah, Aditya, as I mentioned in my opening remarks that we are in discussions with both our banks and investors for raising both debt and equity. These discussions also include some kind of arrangement of funding to be able to meet the immediate maturities of debt which are coming up in FY 2022, the remaining part of FY 2022. We are working on this. We are in fairly advanced stages of discussion with our bankers, and we should have the conclusion soon.
Sure. Thanks a lot. Lastly, are we looking at any handset tie-up to influence our own feature phone subscribers?
Aditya, our strategy on handset has been very clear, which is today we have arrangement with several providers, both of handset manufacturers as well as with financing companies. We bring that tie-up together in the form of bundling them together, which can be purchased by our customers in the form of installments through financing. We believe that is the best model because it provides choice to the customers on not only the type of devices and price points that they want to use, so if somebody wants an INR 10,000 device versus an INR 15,000 versus INR 20,000 or INR 8,000, that's a choice that they can make, and then they can appropriately finance that. Of course, it also depends on the type of handset that they are using.
We believe that is the best option, and we are currently offering that in the market. We offer that to our 2G customers who are looking to either get into the category, going into 4G, or existing 4G customers who are looking to upgrade to potentially a more, let's say, a higher spec, device in that. We believe that is the right strategy, and we will continue to do that. In our tie-up, it is with many, different handset manufacturers and at the same time with multiple financing companies to allow choice to customers. I also mentioned we also have tie-up on refurbished handsets, which also provide a great opportunity to customers who are looking to get into this category for the first time as well.
Thank you. Thanks a lot. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ravinder Takkar for closing comments.
Thank you, Margaret. Well, we hope that the disruptions for second wave of COVID are behind us as the massive vaccination drive continues. We are aware of our duty and the critical role we play in keeping the nation connected, and we will keep on striving to provide uninterrupted services while maintaining an exceptional quality of service. We sincerely appreciate the government's recognition of the criticality of the telecom sector and the support provided by them to address several long-standing issues faced by the sector. We will now focus on achieving our strategic goals with renewed vigor and with clear intent to improve our competitive position in the marketplace. I want to thank you all for joining the call. Please stay safe and have a good evening. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Vodafone Idea Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.