StatsGuru: Taking stock of the telecom sector

For GSM telecom operators, average revenue per user (ARPU) has edged up marginally from Rs 113 at the end of March 2014 to Rs 123 at the end of December 2015 as Table 1 shows. For CDMA operators though, ARPU has declined marginally.

While minutes of usage per user for both has remained more or less stagnant as shown in Table 2, data usage has increased dramatically. As Table 3 shows, data usage per user for GSM subscribers has increased from 51 Mb at the end of March 2014 to 123 Mb at the end of December 2015, while that for CDMA subscribers has increased from 176 Mb to 413 Mb over the same period. As a consequence, income from data usage now accounts for over a fifth of ARPU, as Table 4 shows.

Lacklustre ARPU growth notwithstanding, the telecom sector's contribution to government revenues has increased dramatically over the past years. As Table 5 shows, revenue to the government is expected to touch around Rs 98,994 crore in 2016-17, up from Rs 56,034 in 2015-16. While a significant portion of this is expected to come from the spectrum auctions that will be held later this year, revenue collections from spectrum usage charge (SUC) and licence fees have also increased sharply over the past few years, as shown in Table 6.

But with the telecom commission deciding to peg the SUC for spectrum acquired in the coming auctions at three per cent, revenue to the government through this source is likely to come down marginally in the coming years. Currently telcos such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are paying SUC of 5.3 per cent of their adjusted gross revenues.