Any color on the overall investment over five years towards this Google partnership?
Bharti is still working out the numbers but will step up from where it is today and do whatever is needed for the business to build competitiveness.
Following up on data centers - a 1 GW data center could cost $25-30 billion, and with two partners, Airtel's share could be fairly large. Can you comment on the scale of investment in data centers?
Bharti has not guided on the specific number but will invest whatever is required; the figures cited by analysts are much higher than what Bharti believes the actual investment will be.
On capex - with increases in 5G standalone, home passes, CPEs and data centers, how does this layer into the overall capex moderation guide for the medium term? Do you need to update the short to medium-term capex expectation?
5G standalone is software-led with negligible capex; home capex is built into existing moderation guidance with no change. The only variable is data centers, where there could be some bump-up due to Nxtra investments, but it is premature to quantify and the change is unlikely to be very meaningful.
On 100 million homes view, what market share is acceptable to Bharti and over the next few years do we expect to remain in land grab mode and high capex mode?
Capex on homes is very small as it leverages the existing tower-backbone and intra/inter-city fiber. Bharti is not happy with current market share, the market is consolidating, and the ambition over the next three to four years is to step up performance significantly to capture meaningful incremental net adds.
Hexacom SG&A cost has declined QoQ and YoY - what is driving this, efficiency or one-off?
There is a one-off in the SG&A line; taking a trailing two-quarter average will give a fair representative number.
On Hexacom capex - with 1Q deferment spilling into 2Q, the H1 view is now better, can you guide on FY2026 and FY2027 capex with FY2025 as reference? Second, on homes - is there any divergent trend in your circles given the land grab dilution, and where can homes/offices revenue contribution reach over three to five years?
Directionally Hexacom capex should moderate at an annualized basis with a hold/decline; quarterly phasing has executional and weather variability and should not be over-read. Homes land grab is no different in these two circles.
On the Google Vishakhapatnam partnership, what is the scale of investments over the next five years and is Airtel's role limited to cable landing station and intra/inter-city fiber, or does it also include data center build-out? Second, can you update on Xtelify, Airtel Cloud and software solution wins during the quarter?
It is a composite deal: Nxtra builds the data centers in Vishakhapatnam, Airtel Business provides full terrestrial network connecting to Delhi/Mumbai and builds the cable landing station; Bharti will allocate more capital to Nxtra given current market share of 10-12% is not satisfactory. On Cloud, 70+ customer conversations are open with about six deals signed across manufacturing, distribution and BFSI, plus public sector engagement, with Airtel Cloud's true sovereignty (control plane and jurisdiction in India) as a key differentiator.
Just to clarify on the Google deal - is there a co-investment, or will the entire 1 GW DC build-out be done through Nxtra?
Bharti is doing only part of the build-out and there is another partner doing another part - Google is using two partners in India for this facility.
On the Supreme Court AGR judgment, how applicable is it to Airtel - the order is for Vodafone Idea, do you need to approach the Court or work directly with the government, and are interest/penalty computation errors up for review?
Bharti is pleased that the Court has allowed for reconciliation, having previously sought reviews on calculation errors. The Company will take it one step at a time, first reaching out to the government over the coming days, and proceed from there.
On home broadband, growth has been strong but Jio has been better with a big spike in capex this quarter - are you doing anything differently and how to look at home broadband capex? What share do you target in the 100 million market, and given 2.3 million FWA customers, are you facing capacity issues or considering UBR?
Bharti uses a stringent 30-day-revenue customer definition and tracks well on OTT-platform analytics; there are no FWA capacity issues currently and UBR is in trials but suffers interference in dense areas, suitable only for low-density remote/rural locations. Home broadband capex has two components - home pass rollout and CPE/router - and home pass rollout has been accelerated alongside 5G deployment, leading to elevated near-term capex.
On standalone vs non-standalone for FWA - can you provide more detail on how the technology works, in how many circles, does it enable spectrum splitting, and does it indicate Bharti is preponing the SA transition? Second, on capital allocation - what is the rationale for raising the Indus Towers stake by 5%?
Over 5-6 years all 4G traffic will shift to 5G, requiring band-by-band refarming with both NSA and SA spectrum operating in dual mode; FWA on SA is already live in 13 circles delivering more on-technology time and slight uplink improvement, and SA refarming will start on mobile too, eventually phasing out NSA. On Indus, Bharti views it as a clearly undervalued, strong dividend-paying strategic infrastructure asset, and has taken an enabling provision to raise stake by 5%.
On fixed broadband capex - it works out to ~Rs. 20,000 per customer addition vs Rs. 15-16,000 a couple of quarters back; what is driving the spike given fiber home pass cost has been stable? Second, where do you eventually want to take the Indus stake - 65, 70 percent?
Cost per home pass remains $28-32 unchanged, but accelerated home pass rollout combined with FWA acquisitions inflates per-customer-add capex due to denominator timing - no underlying cost increase. On Indus, Bharti has only taken an enabling provision for 5% beyond which there is nothing further to add.
Just to clarify, the Nxtra investment with Google is a co-location model - you are not going to do server capex yourselves, correct?
It is only a data center build-out.
On convergence as an opportunity, can you talk through how you look at this in the medium to long term for ARPU premiumization?
There is currently a land grab in homes, and convergence (broadband + content) is a very compelling proposition because bundled pricing is far lower than disaggregated DTH plus broadband. About 60% of broadband adds are taking converged plans, and once the land grab phase ends, tariffs in this segment could see some repair given the value offered.
On the 100 million homes opportunity, you are adding about a million homes per quarter while a competitor is adding a bit more - how long does this opportunity last to reach 100 million as an industry, three to four years or longer?
The industry should probably reach the 100 million homes mark over the next five to six years.
Just to confirm, was the comment that home pass capex versus FWA per subscriber is in a similar ballpark?
Cost per connected home pass and FWA cost are similar - $28-30 home pass with ~28-30% utilization gives ~$100 per connected home, versus FWA which is essentially just CPE cost since the 5G mobile radio is already deployed.
Given the increased potential for raising Indus stake, how should we think about any potential synergies between Nxtra and Indus from a corporate action perspective?
Nxtra and Indus have nothing to do with each other - Indus is a passive distributed tower business, while Nxtra benefits from hyperscaler/B2B synergies plus land, power and balance sheet. There is no intention whatsoever of Nxtra being folded into Indus.
Indus is already getting consolidated, so what is the strategic logic for going from 51% to 56% - how does it change the situation?
Indus is viewed as a strategic and highly undervalued asset relative to global tower-company multiples and is a strong dividend payer, so allocating capital to take it up by 5% makes sense. Beyond that is speculative and Bharti has not crossed that bridge.
With the premiumization strategy, are you letting peers grow faster on subscribers who may not be premium today but become premium in five to seven years - how do you get them back?
Bharti takes a balanced approach - quality of acquisition is a major focus (avoiding deal-hunting churners), and tenured churn is the second obsession driven by network experience. The 365-million user base offers significant continued premiumization opportunity and the base will keep growing.
Is there any internal proportion or growth target relative to peers that you keep in mind?
Market share is a way of life - Bharti uses the most stringent customer definition (30-day revenue) in India, also tracks Meta-platform analytics circle-by-circle, and ultimately obsesses over revenue market share, where Bharti has shown consistent gains over the last few years.
If you had to do 5G again or when 6G arrives, what would you do differently in terms of NSA/SA phasing, FWA approach, and how do you adopt 6G?
6G is too far out, and 5G globally has not lived up to its monetization promise - the primary use case is just speed and slicing experiments are too few to matter. Bharti would not change a thing - chasing experience using technology rather than chasing technology for its own sake remains the obsession, validated by consistent OpenSignal awards.
On cross-selling - wireless is still 70%+ in India, where do you see non-wireless share moving over the next few years and what cross-sell opportunities are you eyeing?
Bharti's 365-million wireless customers (with 90-100 million credit-approved) sit at the top of the funnel for postpaid, broadband and finance products, with Airtel Finance lending now ~Rs. 450 Crores enabled by the converged data engine. The next focus is to light up every channel - stores, retail outlets, call centers, digital - to deepen persuasion and cross-sell as a serious moat.
On data centers, with many announcements like TCS's 1 GW plan, do you see most of these investments fructifying or could there be over-hype, and is Bharti open to either DC build-out or cable landing stations or both, with any preference for DC build via Nxtra?
Many announcements are intentions; 50-60% of traditional DC demand is around Mumbai while AI demand will grow outside (e.g., Vishakhapatnam due to coastal cable landings). Bharti's split is clear - Nxtra builds data centers; cable landing stations, terrestrial connectivity and OPGW reside within Airtel Business.
India mobile ARPU has crossed Rs. 250 against an earlier Rs. 300 medium-term target - post reaching that, do you see more industry consolidation or further room for ARPU upside via premiumization or further tariff hikes?
India is at the bottom of both ARPU and rate-per-GB globally so there is room for more tariff repair. A more sensible small-medium-large-XL pricing ladder (versus the current one-size-fits-all architecture) would deliver natural ARPU tailwinds as those who can afford pay more, and Bharti hopes this architectural shift will eventually happen.
On Hexacom, sequential mobile revenue growth was 2.1% vs Airtel's mobility at 2.6% - given underpenetration in Rajasthan and North East, we expected faster growth. Is there seasonality or something making this not comparable?
Pronounced seasonality (migratory population moving back to work and Rajasthan facing high rains/public service dislocation) led to a marginal customer base drop creating a headwind, but ARPU growths are similar and Q3 has started well. There is no major underlying difference.
What seasonality are we really talking about in Hexacom?
There is migratory population moving between place of work and home in less-urbanized geographies, plus Rajasthan saw a very high share of rains and public services dislocation - both created a Q2 impact and Q3 is charting well so far.
Following up - is there ARPU dilution from generous content bundles in your more rural markets, and where do you see homes/offices revenue contribution over three to five years?
Content-driven packs aid acquisition and reduce churn, and during the land grab phase later/marginal customers tend to take lower-priced packs, leading to a directional ARPU reduction in homes - not a concern given the high lifecycle value. Homes growth trajectory of recent quarters should continue, with FWA playing a particularly important role in Hexacom's two circles.