Telcos services revenue dip by 20% to Rs 25,727 cr in Jul-Sep 2018

Revenues of telecom operators or the access service providers from sale of mobile and fixed-line services declined by 19.52 per cent to Rs 25,727.79 crore in July-September 2018 on year-on-year basis, even as the performance improved slightly on a quarterly basis, according to data published by telecom regulator Trai on Tuesday.

The cumulative revenue of access service providers like Reliance Jio, BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone Idea, etc -- which provide last mile connectivity -- from the sale of telecom services increased marginally from Rs 25,585.07 crore registered in April-June 2018.

"In access services, gross revenue (GR), adjusted gross revenue (AGR), licence fee and spectrum usage charges increased by 0.05 per cent, 0.56 per cent, 0.4 per cent and 1.55 per cent, respectively in quarter ended September 2018," 'The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators' report of Trai said.

Reliance Jio registered the highest growth rate of 81.98 per cent in its customer base that reached 21.52 crore at the end of September 2018 on Y-o-Y basis.

It was followed by Airtel which registered a growth of 21.53 per cent taking its customer base to 34.75 crore, Idea Cellular 12.07 per cent with customer base reaching 22 crore, Vodafone 6.98 per cent at customer base of 22.21 crore and BSNL 5.13 per cent with customer base of 124.69 crore during the period under review.

From overall telecom service perspective, the GR of telecom service providers dipped by 12.86 per cent to Rs 57,827.24 from Rs 66,361.7 crore and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) by 13.26 per cent to Rs 36,142.44 crore from Rs 41,668.84 crore on year-on-year basis. There was a marginal dip in both GR and AGR (revenue from sale of telecom services) on quarterly basis too.

The government revenue collections in form of licence fee, spectrum usage charges etc that are computed on the basis of AGR were also adversely impacted.

"The licence fee declined from Rs 2,929 crore for the quarter ended June 2018 to Rs 2,889 crore for the quarter ended September 2018," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India report said.

While AGR for access service providers, which contributed 71.18 per cent to total AGR of telecom services, improved on quarterly basis, the average revenue per subscriber fell by around to Rs 72.5 from 73.34 in previous quarter.