14 March 2024
Vodafone Idea (Vi) has added just 4 million 4G subscribers in four quarters. The company had 126 million 4G users at the end of the third quarter of FY24. 
In the same quarter of the previous financial year, Vi had 122 million 4G users. While its overall subscriber base is depleting fast, its 4G user base is not growing fast enough, especially when compared with that of Airtel and Jio.
For the same quarter, Airtel’s 4G data customers went up by 28.9 million YoY. Meanwhile, Jio only has 4G/5G customers. This means that Vi’s legacy network users aren’t bringing the company much value, as they are low-paying consumers with no data services.
Vi has shut down 3G and refarmed the spectrum for 4G services, but still has to serve millions of 2G customers. Vi's average revenue per user (ARPU) figure grew from Rs135 to Rs145 in four quarters. This growth is extremely slow compared with its competitors.
