India's Reliance Communications has reported a 77% year-on-year decline in net profit for the third quarter to 1.53 billion rupees ($24.7 million), due largely to a one-off accounting gain in the previous corresponding period.
Profit increased 16% sequentially, but revenue declined 2% from the second quarter to 54.03 billion rupees as a result of seasonal factors.
The operator ended the quarter with 29.7 million data customers, including 15.1 million on 3G. Total data traffic increased 19%, with the Reliance Communications customers having an average data usage per subscriber of 752MB.
Tariff hikes associated with Indian operators' price rationalization efforts increased revenue per minute (RPM) by 1.4% to 0.44 rupees and voice RPM at 0.34 rupees.
But total minutes of use (MoU) declined 1% quarter-on-quarter to 102.1 billion due to seasonal factors, and ARPU increased by just 0.7% to 137 rupees.
The operator said its network now covers over 21,000 cities and towns in over 400,000 villages and includes 190,000 km of domestic fiber backhaul. Its 3G network spans 11,659 sites in 333 towns.
The company also managed to reduce its net debt to 363.3 billion rupees from 402.2 billion rupees a quarter earlier.