RCom net down 77.3 per cent in Q2

Reliance Communications, India's fourth largest telecom operator by subscribers, has posted a 77.3-per cent fall in consolidated net profit at Rs153 crore for the second quarter ended 30 September.

The company, which straddles both CDMA and GSM services, had posted Rs675 crore during the same period a year ago.

During the corresponding period last year, the company had a one-time write back of Rs441 crore related to business restructuring.

The company, controlled by industrialist Anil Ambani, posted a 16-per cent rise in net profit, while its EBITDA margin of 33.8 per cent is the industry's highest, the company said in a statement.

RCom's revenue per minute improved 1.4 per cent to 44.4 paisa, while average revenue per user rose 0.7 per cent to Rs137. However, the Mumbai-based company's total minutes of usage fell 1 per cent to 102.1 billion, which was in line with industry trends due to seasonal factors.

The country's total data traffic rose 19 per cent on quarter-on-quarter to 65,778 million MB and 75 per cent on a year-on-year. The traffic has increased due to increase in data subscribers and higher data usage per customer.

Rcom's total data customer base has grown 3.8 per cent Q-o-Q to 29.7 million including 15.1 million 3G customers in Q2.

The company's revenue from Indian operations stood at Rs4,680 crore, down 0.8 per cent from Rs4,718 crore recorded during the previous quarter.

At the end of September quarter, RCom had 29.7 million data users, of which 15.1 million are on its 3G network.

During the quarter, RCom upgraded its data network to include across many more metro cities to enable high speed data services to customers with speeds up to 14.7 MBPS.

This will also help it to launch WiFi dongles and standalone WiFi Routers which will offer rich data experience up to 20 connected devices simultaneously.