New Delhi, Nov 6 (PTI) Bharti Airtel has seen a "churn" in its customer base on a quarter-on-quarter basis, following its recent move to shift towards premium mobile plans, a senior company official said on Friday.
Airtel has restored the Rs 299 entry-level plan with reduced data benefits after an increase in subscriber churn from its network.
The app and website of Airtel have started displaying an option for the Rs 299 plan recharge that will remain valid for 28 days and offer 1 GB data per day instead of the 1.5 GB earlier.
"The churn that we are seeing in Q2 (second quarter) is for us – largely is combination of two things - the seasonality of Q2 that comes in as well as tariff interventions that we took, where there is always a temporary impact on customer continuity," Bharti Airtel, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Shashwat Sharma said during company's earning call.
According to analysts, Bharti Airtel net subscriber addition declined in the September quarter mainly on account of the company's strategy to move towards premium plans.
"Net subscriber adds, however, declined QoQ from 3.3 million to 0.7 million on account of higher churn (up from 2.6 per cent to 2.9 per cent), likely on account of the plan rationalisation step taken in August 2026, which involved discontinuation of the Rs 299 entry-level prepaid smartphone plan," Citi Research said in a report.
Sharma said that usual tariff hikes have worked well for the company's quality customer base.
"I would say I don't see a constraint in terms of headroom or direct growth, etc that we have, and if ever this happens, we firmly believe we will continue to build industry-leading ARPU in this business," he said.
Bharti Airtel's India mobile service revenue in the second quarter ended September 30, 2026, has increased by 10.1 per cent year-on-year, driven by customer additions on a year-on-year basis and average Revenue Per User (ARPU) expanding to Rs 271 in Q2 FY27 from Rs 256 in Q2 FY26, the company said.
Airtel's India customer base increased by about 11 per cent to 49.86 crore. The company's mobile customer base grew by 3.6 per cent to 37.72 crore, and home service, which includes fixed line broadband services, grew by about 29 per cent to 1.53 crore.
Airtel's consolidated capex for the quarter stood at Rs 12,467 crore, including India capex of Rs 9,908 crore during the reported quarter.
Bharti Airtel Executive Vice Chairman Gopal Vittal said the company's capital allocation on wireless networks has moderated.
"If you look at new towers being installed, it's very little now - less than a thousand in the ballpark of 500-600 sites this quarter. Of course, there will continue to be some expansion of 5G. Transport Capex tends to be large because a lot of fiberisation is being done within the company," he said.
During the reported quarter, Airtel invested Rs 2,826 crore in a strategic land parcel for data centre expansion in India.
Vittal said that the company will continue increasing capex in the data centre business and dividend payout.
"A lot of the incremental capex would really go behind the growth bets, which is data centres, as we spoke about and cloud. We have already announced a potential continued buyback in Airtel Africa. We've also done that in the Indus (Towers). So, that will continue. You will see that reflected in our conduct; dividend payouts will keep increasing over time," he said.
Vital said that the land acquisition for data centres provides the company optionality over time of putting in at least a 400- to 500-megawatt plant.
"It's a large tract of land, and also it's concentrated in the right locations where the demand seems to be high. We will continue to look at other options for land and build out, as some of that demand from the US may get directed towards India," he said.
Vittal said a lumpy capex would be earmarked over the next 12 to 18 months for data centre build-out in Visakhapatnam.
(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)