Quite a few of our readers inquire about the total number of GPRS users India; as per the TRAI’s quarterly telecom performance indicator report, the total number of Wireless Internet (GPRS + CDMA Internet Access) users, at the end of September 2007, was 46.37 million. Readers should bear in mind that this data, and indeed all the data in the report is based on information given to the TRAI by telecom operators, and should be considered as an indicator, but doesn’t necessarily reflect the true picture. Reporting higher number of subscribers (is churn being reported?) has its benefits.
Download the 100 page report (lots of charts) here.
Mobile
Interestingly, SMS revenues for operators have fallen – Outgoing SMS per user declined approximately 11 percent, from 36 per user per month by for Q2 2007 to 32 for Q3 2007. Mobile operators don’t openly disclose the contribution of Value Added Services to revenue, and some people tend to bloat those figures by including person-to-person (p2p) SMS’. An indication of the significance of VAS (or lack of), for both TRAI and the operators is that the segment is included as “Other Revenues”, which includes Value-Added-Services and installation etc. These “Other Revenues” for GSM operators increased marginally, from constituting 8.5 percent of revenues to 8.8 percent (details), while for CDMA, it increased from 9.6 percent to 11.5 percent (details).
All in all, the total number of wireless subscribers increased from 184.92 million to 209.07 million, with 55.08 million CDMA subs (26.35%), and 153.99 million GSM subs (73.65%). GSM subs increased by 13.4% during the quarter, while CDMA increased by 12.12%. The subscriber base of top four operators – Bharti, BSNL, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) & Idea – is around 87% of the total GSM subscribers base, with private operators accounting for 79 percent subscribers (details). Wireline subs declined from 40.09 million in from 30th June to 30th September, with rural wireline subscribers decreasing from 12.27 million to 11.99 million
Average Revenue Per User:
GSM: all India Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) declined by 7.4 % from Rs. 297 to Rs. 275. Post-paid ARPU declined from Rs. 655 to Rs. 632, 3.5 percent.
Prepaid ARPU declined from 7.2 %, from Rs. 248 to Rs. 230.
CDMA: ARPU (prepaid+postpaid) at Rs. 173, down significantly from Rs. 206. Lowest ARPU is in West Bengal (Rs.127) while the highest blended ARPU is in Mumbai (Rs. 274)
Internet (marketshare details)
There were 9.63 million wireline Internet subscribers at the end of September 2007 as compared to 9.22 million at the end of June 2007, a growth of nearly 4.37%. Readers will remember that the number of subs had declined by 0.5 percent in the previous quarter. The number of broadband subscribers increased by 10.33 percent, to 2.67 million. 72 broadband service providers had a subscriber base of 2.67 million, with 98.3 percent of those subs with 13 sevice providers. Some stats:
— Broadband connections: 2174401 are DSL based; 319010 Cable Modem; 100592 Ethernet LAN; 21688 Fibre; 27664 Radio customers and 28183 Others.
— Average Revenue Per User per month for dialup Internet Subscribers is Rs. 200
— Quality of service details: here.
Internet Telephony: Total minutes of the use (MoU) for Internet Telephony during the quarter were 129.43 million as compared to 112.26 million for the last quarter registering an increase of 15.29% over the previous quarter.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2008\/01\/08\/419-telecom-performance-report-arpu-declines-voip-grows-4637-wireless-inter\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_b291445ecfa74ad26125ada205815c1c","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}