July 2009: 14.38M Mobile Connections Added In India; Landlines Sink; Broadband At 6.8M

From http://www.medianama.com/2009/08/223-july-2009-1438m-mobile-connections-added-in-india-landlines-sink-broadband-at-68m/ on August 24, 2009

By Preethi J

News of the reviving economy is reflected in the telecom sector in the month of July, which saw an addition of 14.38 million wireless connections compared to the 12.03 million in June, 2009. The total number of telephone connections in the country was 479.07 million at the end of July 2009.

• Teledensity rose from 39.86% in June to 41.08%.
• Wireless teledensity is up from 36.64% to 37.87%
• Total wireless connections rose 3.6% to 441.66 million
• Broadband connections swelled from 6.62 million in June 2009 to 6.8 million.

BSNL Loses 0.16M Landline Users; Bharti Adds 33,940

This segment continues to see churn with BSNL’s customers choosing the wireless route and disconnecting their landlines – the two oldest landline providers BSNL and MTNL lost a total of 0.17 million subscribers in July after losing 0.19 million in June 2009. MTNL lost 8181 to reach 3.54 million connections. BSNL lost 166,519 landline connections and now has 28.62 million; it accounts for 76.5% of the country’s landline userbase and will continue to be hit by negative growth even as private service providers such as Bharti Airtel and RCOM add users by bundling the landlines with other necessary services such as broadband and IPTV.

• Total landline connections in India – 37.41 million
• Wireline teledensity has reduced marginally to 3.21%

Downloads: TRAI Data (PDF)

Other operators offering landlines and their user base:

• Bharti Airtel – 2.86 million
• Reliance Communications – 1.13 million
• Tata Teleservices (Indicom) – 967,554
• HFCL Infotel – 163,399
• Sistema Shyam (MTS) – 111,069

TTML’s network rated ‘Congestion-Free’ yet again!

Mumbai, July 08, 2009: Tata Indicom press release

Reinforcing its claim as the best service provider, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited (TTML), has once again emerged as the only congestion-free network, amongst all telecom operators, in the most recent survey commissioned by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

 In the report for Q4 –FY09, TTML’s network has recorded zero congestion across all its Points of Interconnect (POI). This is the fourth consecutive TRAI report that has rated TTML as the best network provider in its geographies.

Commenting on this achievement, Mr. Haridev Khosla, President–Network, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited, said, “This is a happy moment for us. We have not only achieved the status of being the only congestion-free network but also have managed to consistently ensure the best network for our subscribers as per 4 consecutive TRAI reports. This report vindicates our belief and our investments in our network.”

The network congestion report of all CMSPs for the period January, February, March 2009 is available on the TRAI website.

Indian mobile users to hit 771 mn by 2013: Gartner – The Financial Express

via Indian mobile users to hit 771 mn by 2013: Gartner – The Financial Express on June 18, 2009

Bangalore: Indian mobile users will jump more than 90 per cent to 771 million by 2013 as companies expand networks to rural areas in the world’s fastest growing wireless market, research firm Gartner said.

India had 403.66 million wireless users at the end of April, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India figures showed earlier this month, second only to China that has more than 600 million wireless subscribers.

Cheap call tariffs and handsets are driving demand in India, where operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications are now building telecom towers and networks to cover smaller towns and villages to hook new users.

Gartner, the world’s biggest technology research firm, sees mobile subscriber base growing at a compound annual growth rate of 14.3 per cent in the four years to 2013, up from an estimated 452 million by the end of 2009.

Revenues of Indian mobile phone companies will exceed $30 billion in 2013, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 per cent over the same period, it said.

“The Indian mobile industry has now moved out of its hyper growth mode, but it will continue to grow at double-digit rates … as operators focus on rural parts of the country, said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner.

Gartner, however, predicted a “significant drop” in average revenue per user (ARPU) — a key gauge of performance — as the bulk of new subscribers from the hinterland usually talk less on phones and some use mobiles just to answer calls.

Bharti, which is in talks with South Africa’s telecoms firm MTN Group to create the world’s No.3 wireless group, saw a drop of 15 per cent in its March quarter ARPU as it won more new users in rural areas. The research firm said voice tariffs would fall substantially in 2009 as new operators join the market.

The telecoms unit of Indian developer Unitech Ltd will launch mobile services with Norway’s Telenor in the December quarter this year, a top company official said on Tuesday.

Bharti’s rivals such as Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular are also rapidly expanding their services across the country.

Related stories at

• http://www.ciol.com/technology/mobility/news-reports/indian-mobile-users-to-hit-771-mln-by-2013-gartner/18609121197/0/
• http://efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnewsxml.asp?edid=35243
• http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Indian-mobile-users-to-hit-771-mln-by-2013-Gartner-/articleshow/4671022.cms

DoT seeks Rs 3000 cr support for BSNL- Telecom-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

17 Jun 2009, 0302 hrs IST, Joji Thomas Philip, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: The communications ministry has sought an allotment of Rs 3,000 crore from the finance ministry for supporting BSNL’s wireline networks that were set up before April 2002. The DoT wants the amount to be sanctioned in the budget.

This is to compensate the state-owned telco for losses during the last fiscal after telecom regulator Trai had done away with access deficit charge regime from April 1, 2008. Prior to that, all telcos were paying 0.75% of total revenues towards ADC, which was used to support BSNL’s unviable fixedline operations in rural India. In 2007-08, BSNL got Rs 2,000 crore as ADC.

But, when hanging up on ADC, the regulator in a bid to address the concerns of BSNL , which had warned that it would be forced to discontinue all its rural fixed-line operations if the levy were to go, recommended that the government give it a subsidy of Rs 2,000 crore per annum for the next three years from the Universal Obligation Fund (USOF).

All telcos pay 5% of total revenues towards the USOF, which is dedicated to improving communication facilities in rural India. Unutilised amount in the USOF is at over Rs 20,000 crore. In March 2009, BSNL and DoT had signed an MoU to provide the state-owned operator a subsidy of Rs 6,000 core over the next three years from this fund to sustain its rural operations.

In fact, BSNL had even dragged the regulator to the telecom tribunal, but the latter refused to issue a stay on the matter. Trai had however, justified its move to do away with the ADC regime on the grounds that the total support provided to BSNL over the last couple of years under various initiatives which includes reimbursement of licence fee and spectrum charges, moratorium on payment of interest, support from Universal Service Obligation Fund(USOF), ADC funding and exemption on entry fee was about $8 billion (Rs 31,500 crore), while adding that the PSU cannot be supported in perpetuity.

In a bid to give further relief to BSNL, last year, DoT also exempted telcos from paying licence fee on fixedline telephony from licence fee enabling the state-owned operator to save Rs 1,200 crore annually.

via DoT seeks Rs 3000 cr support for BSNL- Telecom-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times.

Revenue, not user base, to set telecom pecking order

17 Jun 2009, 0305 hrs IST, Rashmi Pratap, ET Bureau

MUMBAI: Subscriber numbers in India’s wireless story are losing their relevance today as far as determining the industry position of a service provider is concerned. t will be revenues and not subscriber numbers that could decide the pecking order in the world’s fastest-growing telecom market.

This is reflected in the latest revenue figures released by the industry regulator, Trai. Going by this, the top three operators in India are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL).

Airtel’s adjusted gross revenue (AGR) from wireless and wireline operations was Rs 7,998 crore for the March quarter. Vodafone Essar, which offers only mobile services, had revenues of Rs 4,456 crore during January-March 2009 on a subscriber base of 68.7 million. Reliance Communications (RCOM), which has the second largest customer base, reported an AGR of only Rs 2,998 crore on 72.6 million users during the quarter, making it the fourth largest in terms of revenues.

The revenues for the state-owned BSNL stood at Rs 3,943 crore making it the third largest. BSNL offers mobile services on GSM apart from fixed line services. Besides showing the revenue capabilities of an operator, AGR is significant, as it is the basis on which service providers pay licence fee and spectrum charges. Operators pay a revenue share licence fee to the government ranging from 6% to 10% of their AGR. Increasingly, operators are targeting revenue growth instead of a larger user base.

According to Bharti Airtel’s vision statement, the company’s aim is 20% increase in revenue margin per subscriber in the next few years.

Analysts contend that with more and more low-end users signing up for services, it is becoming difficult for operators to maintain margins and improve ARPUs (average revenue per user per month). In such a scenario, those who continue to grow revenues along with subscriber base will be the clear winners.

“As the new subscriber base is primarily drawn from tier III towns and rural markets, the incremental subscriber addition is not leading to a commensurate revenue upside for telcos. The catchphrase to evaluate a telco’s performance will be quality of subscribers rather than the number of new subscribers,” Acsendia Consulting principal analyst, Alok Shende told ET.

A smaller player like Idea Cellular, which operates in 13 circles, had AGR of Rs 2,389 crore on a subscriber base of 39 million. This is just about Rs 600 crore less than RCOM on a base which is almost half of that company.

KPMG director (telecom) Romal Shetty said, “Initially, everyone was going after subscriber numbers. Now, they are looking at quality of subscribers. This explains the emphasis on value added services (VAS), which bring in higher revenues.” He pointed out that low-end pre-paid users are now bringing in monthly revenues of as low as Rs 70 per month.

Tata Teleservices reported revenues of Rs 1,889 crore during the quarter placing it at sixth followed by state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL). Aircel, a relatively new entrant, is at the eight position, which had AGR of Rs 721 crore during the quarter.

The Hindu Business Line : Seminar on rural telecom

via The Hindu Business Line : Seminar on rural telecom, Chennai, June 17

The first big revolution in rural telephony happened when STD booths were set up across the country, including in remote villages. Mobile telephones have taken rural India by storm. This mobile revolution is changing the way marketers can connect with their rural audience, according to the Rural Marketing Association of India. It says that a bulk of the anticipated growth in the telecom subscriber base will come from rural India because of the infrastructure support from the Government and aggressive marketing strategies of service providers and handset manufacturers. It is in this context that the association is organising a seminar on `Rural telecom’ in Delhi on July 3.

According to the association, the seminar will help learn from approaches adopted by different stakeholders and debate on how best to design and implement telecom solutions. Dr J.S. Sharma, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, is expected to deliver the keynote address at the seminar, which will see the participation of representatives of service providers and handset manufacturers. – Our Bureau

Customer grievances: Trai for monitoring system

From www.ciol.com on June 15, 2009

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is considering introducing a grievance monitoring system to ensure proper redressal of the customers’ complaints.

According to a PTI report Trai Chairman J S Sarma said “We are looking at a Grievance Monitoring System where the regulator will seek update from the service providers on those complaints of customers which have not been addressed for a reasonable period of time. ”
   
He said the system will be set up after consultations with the service providers to protect interests of customers.    

But the initiative will not be done through any ‘heavy hand’ rules, rather it would be a facilitating move to serve the customer better which is a win-win situation for everybody, Sarma said.    

At present, there is no such system to know if the customer’s complaint has been addressed or not, if not why, once a user lodges complaint with a service provider on any issues ranging from billing to quality of service.    

It is left to the telcos to look at complaints and act on it and sometimes there are long-pending complaints which go unadressed for a long time or not looked into at all and the customers become helpless and stop pursuing the solution.    

Trai has put in place a number of mechanism to protect consumers from any harassment or exploitation by the telcos but in absence of any follow-up action to ensure the redressal, it becomes a fragile assurance.

Number portability: Trai to seek views on tariff

8 Jun 2009, 0227 hrs IST, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: Telecom regulator Trai will float a consultation paper this week seeking views of stakeholders and experts on fixing tariffs for the mobile number portability service, which will be available after September.

“We will issue a consultation paper next week on the port and dipping charges of mobile number portability (MNP) service … We will have to see the service is affordable to customers,” Trai chairman J S Sarma said.

Subscribers can change their 10-digit mobile number without changing the service providers by October when mobile number portable services start. As per DoT roadmap, MNP services is to take off by September 20.

In most of the countries where MNP is prevalent, the subscribers are not charged for availing the service. Domestic service providers say they need to recover the huge amount of cost they will put in the MNP infrastructure of their network.

Sarma said afford ability will be a key consideration for MNP service and Trai has to ensure that. There is forbearance in telecom tariffs but Trai is the ultimate authority of the tariff related issues. MNP tariffs would be decided by Trai, he said. As per DoT’s roadmap for MNP service schedule, Trai will decide on all kinds of tariffs related to MNP, like the transaction fee to be charged from the customer for seeking change of number.

Sources said number portability charges are likely to be below Rs 300 and it will take maximum two days to change the service provider.