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| Sunil Sood, Vodafone India CEO |
He shared some views about vodafone services
Your views on the state of the telecom industry?
Than before now we are getting more clarified and understanding that spectrum has been changing ... that is why you have laws like spectrum sharing and now trading in a few days. There are more auctions of late and discussions with defence for swapping and harmonization.
Are you interested in sharing?
Spectrum sharing is good in the aspects of user experience by using the airways and pooling in our resources. Our team working on it to get a better idea after that we will went for those. We clearly don't want to sign on any agreements with other operators to find later that we have violated some guidelines.
What are the areas of confusion in sharing rules?
We want to clarify some good and bad things about airwaves. Wherever there are liberalised and unliberalised airwaves, there are certain nuances, there could be certain permutations and combinations which we want (the government) to clarify. After getting clarified all the things are fine then we wil go to some one and talk. In dense population every operator is short on spectrum and we are looking to enhance better spectrum pool even in dense population.
Do you anticipate a tariff war post Jio's entry?
For whatever happens we need to prepare ourselves. We've seen competition before. Despite 8,9,10 operator in some circles, there's already a profound awareness of consolidation. 90% of the incremental earnings is got by the top three operators of this circle.
You have 4G capabilities in only five circles. By when do you expect to increase your presence?
We expect to roll out all our sites by first quarter of next year in all the five circles we have the spectrum in. Due to economic parameters, such as handset penetration and data consumption, we are launching (4G services only) in these circles. Wider adoption of 4G will take some years.
Will you focus more on 4G in upcoming auctions than 3G?
We shall focus on both. 3G is what's required right now and 4g is what's needed in future.
What's your capex plan this fiscal?
Last year, under Project Spring, we invested close to $1.2 billion. We expect it to be similar this year.
Vodafone has spoken about as being natural consolidator in India. Are you considering it?
As of now, M&A rules are not favorable. The other big factor is that the debt levels of smaller players continue to spiral and is out of control. So it depends upon the price at which the owners are willing to sell at.
By when will the payment bank be up and running?
Still we have 18 months in hand to launch it and waiting for RBI letter.
