The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recently released the performance indicator report (PIR) for the October-December 2015 quarter. The report, prepared on the basis of information provided by service providers, highlights the growth trends in the telecom sector during this period.

According to the report, the country’s telecom subscriber base (wireless and wireline) increased from 1,022.61 million as of September 30, 2015 to 1,036.41 million as of December 31, 2015, registering a growth of 1.35 per cent over the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the subscriber base reflected a 6.74 per cent year-on-year growth. The overall teledensity increased from 80.98 per cent as of September 30, 2015 to 81.83 per cent as of December 31, 2015.

Bharti Airtel led the pack with 246.89 million subscribers as of December 31, 2015, followed by Vodafone India (193.69 million) and Idea Cellular (171.91 million). With regard to net additions during the quarter, Airtel recorded the highest growth with 8.15 million additions, followed by Vodafone with 5.43 million.

Telecom subscription in urban areas increased from 599.01 million as of end-September 2015 to 600.66 million as of end-December 2015, whereas urban teledensity declined slightly from 152.76 per cent to 152.45 per cent.

The rural telecom subscriber base grew from 423.61 million to 435.75 million during the same period, resulting in rural teledensity increasing from 48.66 per cent to 49.94 per cent. The share of rural subscribers in the total user base also increased from 41.42 per cent in September 2015 to 42.04 per cent in December 2015. Idea Cellular had the highest share of rural subscribers (54.94 per cent) in its user base, followed by Vodafone India (53.04 per cent).

Wireline

The country’s wireline subscriber base reduced from 25.95 million to 25.52 million during the period under review, thereby reducing wireline teledensity from 2.06 per cent to 2.01 per cent. The rural wireline subscriber base declined from 4.77 million to 4.53 million while the urban subscriber base decreased from 21.18 million to 20.99 million.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited continued to lead the market with a 60.28 per cent share. However, the company’s subscriber base decreased by about 3.27 per cent during the period October-December 2015 to stand at 15.13 million at the end of the quarter. Bharti Airtel recorded the highest net additions (74,000 subscribers) during the period.

The total number of public call offices (PCOs) in the country stood at 615,000 as of end-December 2015, as compared to 658,000 at end-September 2015. The number of PCOs witnessed a year-on-year decline of 20.68 per cent during October-December 2015. Meanwhile, there was no change in the number of village public telephones, which remained at 587,280 at end-December 2015. At the end of the quarter, 98.91 per cent of the country’s 593,731 inhabited villages (as per Census 2001) were connected.

Wireless

The total wireless (GSM and CDMA) subscriber base grew by 1.43 per cent, from 996.66 million as of end-September 2015 to 1,010.89 million as of end-December 2015. Teledensity increased from 78.93 per cent to 79.82 per cent.

The rural subscriber base increased by 0.32 per cent in the quarter ended Decem­ber 2015 as compared to 0.24 per cent growth in the quarter ended September 2015, while the urban subscriber base grew by 2.96 per cent, as against 2.64 per cent in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the share of rural subscribers in the total wireless subscriber base increased from 42.02 per cent to 42.66 per cent during the quarter under review.

GSM services continued to dominate the wireless market, accounting for 95.36 per cent of the total wireless subscriber base. The GSM subscriber base stood at 963.99 million in December 2015 as against 948.55 million in September 2015, registering a growth of 1.63 per cent. Meanwhile, the CDMA user base registered a decline of 2.52 per cent, from 48.11 million to 46.9 million, during the same period.

With a subscriber base of 243.29 million, Bharti Airtel had the highest share of 25.24 per cent in the GSM market, followed by Vodafone India with 193.6 million users and Idea Cellular with 171.91 million users.

Among CDMA operators, Reliance Communications maintained its leadership position with a subscriber base of 25.71 million and a market share of 54.83 per cent. It was followed by Tata Tele­ser­vices Limited and Sistema Shyam Tele­Services Limited with 11.88 million and 8.01 million subscribers respectively.

Mobile ARPUs and usage

GSM services

The monthly all-India blended ARPU for GSM players increased from Rs 122 in the quarter ended September 2015 to Rs 123 in the quarter ended December 2015. Prepaid ARPUs increased from Rs 104.99 to Rs 105.14 while post-paid ARPUs increased from Rs 490 to Rs 491.

The overall monthly minutes of usage (MoUs) per subscriber for GSM services increased from 374 during the quarter en­ded September 2015 to 376 during the quarter ended December 2015. The ratio of incoming and outgoing MoUs stood at 51.5:48.5. The number of outgoing SMSs per subscriber per month declined from 23 to 22 during the same period.

CDMA services

The monthly all-India blended ARPU for CDMA mobile services decreased from Rs 106 in the quarter ended September 2015 to Rs 103 in the quarter ended December 2015. During this period, the ARPUs decreased from Rs 54 to Rs 52 for prepaid services and from Rs 507.30 to Rs 497 for post-paid services.

The overall monthly CDMA MoUs per subscriber decreased by 1.88 per cent from 256 in the quarter ended September 2015 to 252 in the quarter ended Decem­ber 2015.

Outgoing MoUs decreased by 0.36 per cent and incoming MoUs decreased by 3.85 per cent during the period October-December 2015. Prepaid MoUs per subscriber per month decreased by 1.7 per cent and post-paid MoUs per subscriber per month decreased by 2.1 per cent during this period.

Quality of service

During October-December 2015, the performance of 2G wireless service providers in terms of quality of service (QoS) improved on parameters such as accumulated downtime at base transceiver stations (BTSs), traffic channel (TCH) congestion, call drop rates, worst-affected cells with a TCH drop (call drop) rate of more than 3 per cent, connections with good voice quality, the period of applying credit/waivers/ adjustments to customer accounts from the date of complaint resolution, the percentage of calls answered by operators (voice to voice) within 90 seconds, and the percentage of requests for the termination/closure of service complied with within seven days.

On the other hand, the performance of 2G wireless service providers deteriorated on account of metering and billing cred­ibility (prepaid and post-paid), resolution of billing/charging/validity complain­ts, accessibility to call centres/customer care and the time taken for refunding deposits after closures.

3G operators showed an improved QoS in terms of BTSs and Node B accumulated downtime, and worst-affected cells with TCH (call drop) and circuit switched voice drop – CBBH rates of more than 3 per cent. However, the QoS deteriorated on four parameters – worst-affected BTSs and Node Bs due to downtime, call set-up success rate, paging channels and RRC congestion, and TCH and circuit-swit­ch­ed RAB congestion.

Internet and broadband

TRAI has divided this segment into two parts – internet subscribers who do not access services through mobile devices, and internet subscribers who access services through mobile devices.

As of end-December 2015, the country had 133 internet service providers (ISPs) and 331.66 million internet subscribers, including those accessing the internet through mobile handsets. The wired broadband subscriber base stood at 19.6 million. Bharti Airtel led the internet market with a 25.35 per cent share (84.06 million subscribers), followed by Vodafone India (67.45 million) and Idea Cellular (41.37 million). The top 10 ISPs together accounted for 98.15 per cent of the subscriber base. The top five circles in terms of internet subscriptions (wired and wireless) were Maharashtra (28.51 million), Tamil Nadu including Chennai (27.27 ­­mi­lli­on), Andhra Pradesh (24.43 million), Karnataka (22.18 million) and Uttar Pra­desh (East) (21.84 million).

As of December 2015, there were 136.53 million broadband subscribers and 195.13 million narrowband subscribers. Wireless (dongle and phone) is the most preferred technology for providing broadband services and it constituted 93.82 per cent of the total broadband subscriber base. The top five circles in terms of broad­band subscriptions are Tamil Nadu including Chennai (13.57 million), Maha­rashtra (12.27 million), Karnataka (11.09 million), Delhi (11.02 million) and Andhra Pradesh (10.35 million).

Financial performance

During the quarter ended December 2015, the sector’s gross revenue and adjusted gross revenue stood at Rs 653.47 billion and Rs 460.87 billion respectively, an in­cr­­ease of 2.18 per cent and 5.73 per cent over the previous quarter.