StatsGuru: Taking stock of telecom before the next round of auctions

The telecom industry is gearing up for another round of spectrum auctions. How is it doing? As Table 1 shows, there is still potential for growth - but in rural areas, which have far to go to catch up with urban areas in terms of teledensity.



And, as Table 2 shows, the vast majority of the market is still for prepaid connections, not the more sought-after postpaid.


However, much else has been changing. As Table 3 shows, "other" charges - meaning data - are a larger part of revenue.


And Average Revenue per User, or ARPU, has largely been declining, as Table 4 reveals - the recent uptick may just be because the telecom service providers have cleaned their rolls of defunct users.


Still, the industry has shown a decent jump in profits in the last financial year, as Table 5 shows.


Much of this comes from squeezing expenditure growth, as demonstrated by Table 6.


But the auctions come at a time when debt in the industry - mapped in Table 7 - continues to be high. Many expect that the time has come for consolidation - as Table 8 shows, there are many small players with low market share in the business.

Statsguru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard will guide you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines.

 

Compiled by BS Research Buereau 

Graphics by Anisha Dutta