Bharti Airtel on Monday posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 759 crore for the January-March quarter of 2020-21. The company had posted a loss of Rs 5,237 crore in the same period a year ago.

Analysts had estimated the company to post a profit of around Rs 958.8 crore in the fourth quarter.

Sequentially, the consolidated net profit declined 11 per cent and its average revenue per user (ARPU) also declined despite adding regularly paying customers.

The consolidated revenue of Bharti Airtel increased 11.9 per cent to Rs 25,747 crore during the reported quarter compared with Rs 23,019 crore in the year-ago period.

For the year ended March 2021, Bharti Airtel narrowed the loss to Rs 15,084 crore from Rs 32,183 crore in 2019-20.

Though the ARPU has fallen from Rs 166 in the third quarter to Rs 145 in the January-March period, it continues to remain the best in industry.

The company continues to garner a strong share of the 4G net additions in the market. Its 4G data customers increased 31.5 per cent year-on-year to 179.3 million, an addition of around 43 million customers over the last four quarters.

The average data usage per customer was 16.4 GB per month, while voice usage was at 1,053 minutes per customer every month.

The annual revenue of Bharti Airtel crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in financial year 2020-21.

Jio submarine cable

Reliance Jio has said it is building the largest international submarine cable system centred on India.

In conjunction with several key global partners and world-class submarine cable supplier SubCom, Jio is deploying two next-generation cables to support the data demand.