The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently released its quarterly report on telecom service performance indicators for the period April to June 2006. It provides an update on growth trends in various telecom services. We bring you the key highlights…

Fixed line services
From this quarter, TRAI stated that it would include the WLL(F) segment as a mobile service instead of a fixed line service. Given this, the fixed line subscriber base declined by less than 1 per cent from 41.5 million in the quarter ended March 2006 to 41.27 million as on June 30, 2006. During this period, fixed line services were being provided by five licensed private operators Bharti Telesonic, Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL) Infotel, Shyam Telelink and Reliance Communications, besides the incumbents, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).

While BSNL and MTNL had market shares of 84.68 per cent and 9.19 per cent respectively, the five private operators had a combined share of 6.13 per cent. The quarter saw the market share of BSNL and MTNL expand significantly over the previous quarter, primarily because from now on, WLL(F) figures are no longer included in these calculations.

Direct exchange lines (DELs) decreased from 51.5 million to 41.2 million in the period under review. A comparison of the number of rural and urban DELs shows that there were 14.88 million rural DELs as against 33.18 million urban DELs. While BSNL had 99.92 per cent market share of rural DELs, in the urban areas, its share was 78 per cent. MTNL followed with 13 per cent market share in urban DELs; private operators had 9 per cent share in the same.

Other performance indicators
Public call offices (PCOs): During the quarter, 303,396 new PCOs were added, taking the total number of PCOs in the country to 4.5 million. Of these, BSNL and private players owned approximately 2.1 million PCOs each, while MTNL had 273,345.

Village public telephones (VPTs): The April to June 2006 quarter saw a minor addition of 633 VPTs in the country, taking the total to 549,476. While BSNL added 755 VPTs, the five private operators removed 122 such telephones. Not surprisingly, 9.55 per cent of India’s 607,491 villages still do not have any VPTs.

Mobile services
 From the April-June 2006 quarter onwards, the mobile subscriber base includes GSM, CDMA, WLL(F) and WLL(M) users. With the inclusion of the WLL(F) segment, the mobile subscriber base crossed the 100 million mark to reach 112.15 million in the period under review. As of June 30, 2006, there were 78.49 million GSM subscribers, 26.87 million CDMA subscribers, and 6.8 million WLL(F) subscribers.

Quarterly GSM growth rates have slowed down, from 18.29 per cent in the quarter ended March 2006 to 13.43 per cent in the quarter under consideration. In comparison, CDMA growth rates have increased significantly to 28.33 per cent during the same period.

The number of WLL(F) subscribers has declined by 21.41 per cent during this period. This is because several operators have included their WLL subscriptions under CDMA services. Reliance Communications remains the largest WLL(F) operator followed by BSNL and TTSL with a subscriber base of 3.36 million, 2.27 million and 950,000 respectively.

The GSM segment is dominated by private operators who account for 74 per cent of the subscriber base. While the Gujarat circle registered the highest subscriber addition of 767,000, BPL in Mumbai was the only operator to register a negative growth rate of 3.01 per cent.

In the CDMA segment, the Delhi circle clocked the highest number of subscriber additions. The incumbents, however, registered a negative subscriber growth in all circles except West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, the Northeast and Jammu & Kashmir.

Overall, Bharti was rated the largest mobile operator followed by Reliance Communications and BSNL. Bharti had 23.09 million subscribers (accounting for 20.59 per cent of the market) while Reliance and BSNL had 22.52 million (20.08 per cent market share) and 21.02 million subscribers (18.74 per cent market share) respectively.

Bharti and Reliance are providing services in all 23 circles in the country. Reliance Telecom, Reliance Communications’ GSM arm, has applied for a unified licence in all its areas of operation. Dishnet Wireless, operating under the Aircel brand, is yet to start services in Himachal Pradesh and Bihar.

Mobile service trends
 As of June 2006, the share of prepaid subscribers in the total GSM subscriber base was 82 per cent as compared to 80.54 per cent at the end of March 2006. In the CDMA segment too, prepaid was much more popular with 87 per cent of the users opting for it compared to 79 per cent at the end of March 2006. However, the GSM prepaid segment expanded by only 2.4 per cent over the previous quarter.

Mobile ARPUs
The average revenue per user (ARPU) for mobile operators continued to decline over the quarter due to falling tariffs. The allIndia blended ARPU per month for GSM operators decreased from Rs 366 in the quarter ended March 2006 to Rs 352 in the quarter under consideration. Similarly, the all-India ARPU figure for CDMA operators fell from Rs 256 to Rs 228.

The lowest blended GSM ARPU per month was in Circle B, Rs 319, which is lower than the previous quarter’s corresponding figure, Rs 338. The highest blended ARPU was in the metro circle (Rs 406).

The all-India GSM ARPUs for the post-paid segment witnessed some growth. It increased from Rs 628 in March 2006 to Rs 643. However, in the prepaid segment, the ARPU decreased from Rs 298 to Rs 286 during the same period.

For CDMA operators, there is a huge difference between post-paid and prepaid ARPUs, though both have decreased in the period under review. The post-paid ARPU is 2.9 times that of the prepaid ARPU. The ARPU in the post-paid segment has decreased from Rs 547 in the quarter ended March 2006 to Rs 534 in June 2006 while the prepaid ARPU has fallen from Rs 184 to Rs 183.

In an operator-wise comparison, BSNL and MTNL saw a reduction in ARPU from Rs 391 to Rs 370. This was mainly due to a 3.9 per cent decrease in ARPUs in the prepaid segment even though post-paid ARPUs increased. Those of private GSM service providers also decreased from Rs 357 to Rs 345.

Mobile usage pattern
The minutes of usage (MoU) per GSM subscriber increased from 395 minutes in the quarter ended March 2006 to 414 minutes. In contrast, the MoU for CDMA operators declined from 550 minutes to 443 minutes. The higher growth rate of outgoing MoUs resulted in a better incoming-to-outgoing minutes ratio for GSM subscribers, which is at 57:43 in June 2006 against 59:41 in the previous quarter. The ratio for the post-paid segment was 53:47 and for the prepaid segment 59:41. For the CDMA segment, the incomingto-outgoing minutes ratio increased from 56:44 to 57:43.

Circle-wise, the outgoing MoU per GSM subscriber has been the highest in Circle A at 188 minutes and the highest incoming MoU per subscriber has been registered in the metros at 254 minutes per month. In the CDMA segment, Circle A at 437 minutes per month recorded the lowest blended per subscriber usage for both outgoing and incoming calls.

Mobile revenue per minute
The all-India blended revenue per minute for GSM operators for the quarter under consideration declined by 8.4 per cent from Re 0.93 in March 2006 to Re 0.85 in June 2006. In the CDMA segment, the corresponding figure increased from Re 0.47 to Re 0.52.

Internet services
As of end-June 2006, 153 internet service providers (ISPs) were operational. For the quarter under consideration, the subscriber base was 7.71 million as compared to 6.9 million in the previous quarter, an 11.1 per cent increase. The annual growth rate was 30.73 per cent and 1.82 million subscribers were added during the year.

With a subscriber base of 3.3 million, BSNL retained its position as the number one ISP. MTNL maintained its second position with 1.5 million subscribers followed by Sify with 900,000 subscribers. VSNL remained in the fourth position with a subscriber base of 470,000 and Bharti, with 440,000 subscribers, occupied fifth place.

Leased line connectivity
The number of leased line internet connections stood at 16,195 during the quarter ended June 2006 compared to 15,596 connections at the end of March 2006, an increase of about 4 per cent.

High speed broadband connectivity
The number of broadband subscribers continued to grow over the quarter. It increased by about 19 per cent from 1.3 million in March 2006 to 1.55 million in June 2006.

Internet MoU/ARPU
According to the reports of 30 ISPs, the average MoU per subscriber per month was 190 minutes compared to 175 during the previous quarter. For dial-up internet usage, the ARPU per month was of the order of Rs 210, similar to that of the previous quarter.

VSAT services
VSAT services were being provided by nine operators as of June 30, 2006. In the current quarter, 2,665 new subscribers were added. The subscriber growth rate during this period was 5.32 per cent compared to the previous quarter’s 7.51 per cent.

HCL Comnet remained the market leader with 17,776 VSAT subscribers followed by HECL with 17,115, Bharti Televentures with 7,508 and Bharti Broadband with 4,781 VSAT subscribers.

PMRTS
The public mobile radio trunked service (PMRTS) subscriber base decreased from 29,950 at the end of March 2006 to 29,430 in end-June 2006, registering a marginally negative growth rate of 1.74 per cent. Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai together accounted for 69.98 per cent share of the total PMRTS subscriber base. Delhi led with a market share of 9,135 subscribers followed by Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai with 5,219, 3,382 and 2,858 subscribers respectively.