Rivals need to close data capacity gap with Jio: Kotak report

New Delhi: Incumbent telecom companies like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular need to speed up efforts to close the gap with Reliance Jio on data capacity levels, signalling a higher level of capital spends for coming 2-3 years, says a report.

Kotak Institutional Equities, in a recent report on telecom sector, said analysis using the BTS (base transceiver station) count of Jio and incumbents, and number crunching showed that the newcomer has "62 per cent share of the combined data capacity of these operators".

"Bharti Airtel, with around 21 per cent share of the composite capacity is ahead of Idea and Vodafone's combined 17 per cent...Even as we do not think incumbents need to match Jio on data capacity anytime soon, we do believe they need to accelerate their efforts in closing the gap," the report said. This could possibly mean "elevated" levels of capex for the next 2-3 years "posing upside risks to capex forecasts", it added.