Did Reliance Jio’s extra levy for outgoing calls benefit Airtel, Vodafone Idea?

Bharti Airtel Ltd has launched a qualified institutional placement worth $2 billion, and is out to raise another $1 billion through a foreign currency convertible bond (FCCB) issue.

Amidst the fund-raise, the company has released certain operating metrics for the December quarter, that indicate a sharp uptick in subscriber additions and voice traffic.

Total voice volumes on the Airtel’s network grew 5.9% sequentially last quarter. In the September quarter they had dropped 2.8%. The growth came even as market leader Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd began charging an additional amount to recover mobile termination charges levied on outgoing calls to rival networks.