India’s largest telecom firm Vodafone-Idea is looking to retain the best aspects of both Vodafone and Idea infrastructure to compete with rivals in the market, reported Business Standard.

The company also plans to enhance consumer benefits while reducing operational expenses (opex), the BS report said.

“Ultimately the amount of spectrum determines the kind of customer experience we can provide. When we look at India through the prism of districts, we see higher revenues from one out of four quadrants. Almost all geographies have both networks and we plan to pick up better of the two networks across locations,” CEO Balesh Sharma was quoted as saying in the report.

This, according to the report, indicates that the combined entity would embark on tower network rationalisation across geographies.

As per the report, the management plans to invest Rs 27,000 crore in 2019-20 along with the savings of around Rs 14,000 crore. In addition, the company will also look to raise the minimum recharge tariffs to Rs 35 per month for integrated data and voice services to improve profitability, said the report.

The new strategy from Vodafone Idea comes at a time when its rival Jio is aggressively making acquisitions in the content space, including stakes in Saavn and Balaji, while Airtel has partnered Amazon Prime and Hotstar, the report added.

Disclosure:

RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.