Idea Cellular lost a total of 6.35 million mobile Internet connections for the quarter ended 31st March 2017, down to 42.23 million from 48.58 million last quarter. This is even lower than the 44.02 million it reported for the same quarter last year. Of this, there was a decline of 2.871 million in 3G connections, somewhat offset by the addition of 528,000 4G connections, a quarter after losing almost that many. Idea's 4G connection base has gone from 3.073 million at the end of September 2016 to 2.54 million at the end December, and back up to 3.069 by the end of March 2017. The latest recovery has been timed rather well with Jio launching paid services. Year on year, though, the numbers look better: Idea has gone from 0.68 million 4G connections in March 2016 to 3.069 million in March 2017. This, by no stretch of the imagination, compares to Jio's all-4G user base of 72 million by the end of the same time period. If tomorrow's telecom operators are indeed going to largely be data-networks, Idea Cellular has a lot of catching up to do. ARPU/RPM The other number we're monitoring closely is ARPU: The average revenue per user metric is back in vogue now -- around five years after telcos started saying that investors should focus on 'revenue/realisation per minute' due to multi-SIM usage in India -- because telecom operators are now looking to offer consumers more services bundled together, trying to get more-money-per-user, instead of leeching more-profit-per-minute. Also, revenue per MB and…
