StatsGuru: Examining the key numbers for India's mobile phone operators

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Is the mobile phone operator space on the brink of reorganisation? On the face of it, it is not doing as badly as private players claim. Gross adjusted revenue has trended comfortably upwards, as shown in Table 1. Meanwhile, debt has ceased to grow, and has even begun to reduce, as Table 2 shows. This shows up in Table 3, where debt as a percentage of assets has dipped below 50 per cent for the first time since 2009-10.

However, as Table 4 shows, net sales are not showing robust growth. And profit growth, in Table 5, shows a distinct downward trend. Perhaps the composition of revenue, in Table 6, holds a clue. The number of chargeable talk-time minutes per subscriber is not growing, as Table 7 shows. And thus average revenue per user is stagnating, in Table 8. The crowded marketplace, shown in Table 9, does not help, either.