Major portion of data customers have returned to Idea, says MD Himanshu Kapania

Idea Cellular, which faced huge losses in FY17 after its subscribers moved to Reliance Jio for free data services, hopes to recover soon.

The hope has stemmed from the fact that a big chunk of its data customers has already come back after Jio started charging its services. Idea cellular MD Himanshu Kapania said that the rates would be stabilised in the second half of the fiscal.

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"We are expecting this (revenue growth) for both industry and us. On a full year basis, we are expecting industry should be flat to slight growth and which means industry will recover from Q4 of FY17 to Q4 of next year by 15%," Kapania said. "...the losses that we made in FY17, we will be able to recover."

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"Customers will move to a superior network and despite the new entrant adding 75 million customers, the losses by the three operators are almost insignificant and we will continue to add subscribers," he added.

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Kapania expects that minutes of voice usage will grow in double digits, with the growth going up to 20-30%. This will make the industry move from double digit data growth to triple digit growth.

(Image source YouTube)