Telecom Roundup: ARPU, Internet & Broadband Subs; VoIP Declines; Inflation Hits Handset Sales

An All India blended ARPU for GSM subscribers declined by 5.09%, from Rs 275 in the September ending quarter, to Rs 261 in the December ending quarter, according to the December 2007 ending report released by TRAI. VAS, a composite of which is Other Revenues, decreased as a component of GSM ARPU from 8.8% to 8.2% QoQ. CDMA fared a worse fate decreasing from 11.5% to 7.5% during the same period. Interestingly, revenues from GSM SMS continue to decline from 5.2% to 4.6% and a minor decline from 2% to 1.9% for CDMA

CDMA and GSM both recorded similar growth rates, adding 11.44% and 11.84% respectively. CDMA now captures 26.28% of the total wireless market and GSM 73.72%. Bharti continues to reign with a 32% market share followed by Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) at 23% and BSNL 19%. Internet subs reached 10.36 million as compard to 9.63 million last quarter, registering a growth of 7.64%. The old wireless internet story came out trumps again, with 57.83 million wireless internet subscribers, there are more users accessing the internet through their mobile devices than fixed wirelines subscribers. Broadband subscribers now form 3.13 million, up from 2.67 million, a growth of 17.23% QoQ. BSNL retains its leadership with an internet subscriber base of 4.99 million, which is a marketshare of 48.17%. Total minutes of the use (MoU) for Internet
Telephony (Voice over IP) during the quarter were 121.30 million minutes as compared to 129.43 million minutes for the last quarter – a decrease of 6.28% over
the previous quarter. Press release here, Full Report here

Speaking of BSNL, the state owned telco along with MTNL lost approximately 46 landline connections in 07-08. According to ET, 43.8 BSNL lines were surrendered while MTNL lost 2.1 lakh connections.

Rising Inflation has seen the launch of new cellphones postponed. ET quotes Future’s Biyani as stating that cell phone demand has diped 20-25%, MobileStore CEO Agrawal states growth in sales are about 15% each month but have dipped to 3% in March. With the entry of 9 new operators, expect high end handsets to be subsidized with bundled voice/sms/data plans and a lock-in period thrown in for good measure.

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