Telecom revenue dips 8%, licence fee by 16% in FYQ3 vs FYQ2: Trai

Gross revenue of telecom services providers declined by 8.1 per cent while the licence fee collected by the government dropped by 16 per cent year-on-year in the quarter ended on December 31, 2017, a report by sector regulator Trai said.

The adjusted gross revenue (AGR) earned by companies from the sale of telecom services declined by 16.05 per cent to Rs 385.36 billion in the reported on year-on-year basis.

"Gross Revenue (GR) and Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) of telecom service sector for the quarter ended December 2017 has been Rs 610.89 billion and Rs 385.36 billion respectively. The year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in GR and AGR over the same quarter in last year has been (-) 8.18 per cent and (-) 16.05 per cent respectively," the Trai's quarterly performance indicator report said.

The licence fee which is collected from telecom service providers on the basis of AGR, in turn, declined by 16.04 per cent to Rs 31.04 billion in October-December 2017 period from Rs 3.24 billion in the same period a year ago.

The spectrum usage charge, which is also one of the major components of government's revenue declined by 29.72 per cent to Rs 11.52 billion in the reported period from Rs 16.39 billion in the same period a year ago.

The revenue of access service providers (ASPs) fell by 22.3 per cent during the period under review to Rs 289.67 billion from Rs 372.83 billion a year ago. The ASPs provide telecom services directly to consumers like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, BSNL, MTNL, etc.

The monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) earned by telecom service providers for GSM and 4G mobile services declined by 5.37 per cent to Rs 79 in the reported period from Rs 84 in the July-September 2017 period.

There were 1.19 billion telephone subscribers in India at the end of December 2017.

"Monthly ARPU for GSM service (including LTE) declined by 23.61 per cent on y-o-y in this quarter," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in the report.

The total number of internet subscribers increased to 445.9 million at the end of December 2017 from 429.2 million at the end of September 2017.