Oct 08: 328M Mobile, 5.28M Broadband Lines; India Cannot Have 40 M Broadband Lines Without Wireless

By the end of November 2008, Indias wireline subscriber base had declined by 0.17 million (0.44%) to 38.05 million, and its broadband base had grown to 5.28 million, an increase of 230,000 connection at 4.55%. The wireline-to-broadband conversion rate was at 13.88%.

(Charts in this post: Broadband connections and conversion, Mobile operator subscriber growth and marketshare, Statewise distribution of mobile subscribers, Statewise distribution of Broadband subscribers)

For the last 6 months that we have been analysing the telecom numbers, two factors have stood out: Firstly, that the growth in broadband connections has too slow at between 3.06%-5.59% especially on a low base of less than 5.5 million connections, and secondly that the wireline connection base has been consistently declining, at 0.33%-0.71% per month.

According to our calculations*, if wireless broadband does not come into play, India will achieve 100% wireline-to-broadband conversion by September 2012, but with only around 31.4 million broadband connections. 

Three things can improve this situation:

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TRAI Mandates Changes To Short Code Services; Holes In The DNC Bucket

This is important for the VAS companies sending out SMS’: The TRAI has mandated mobile operators prefix a service provider and service area code in order to allow the authority to track unsolicited SMS’. Thus, an SMS received from the Hard Rock Café in Mumbai, if sent via Vodafore, will have to be displayed as VM-Hardrock. This is in order to help crack down on alphanumeric SMS’, the source of which was difficult to track. The deadline for the change has been set for Feb 2009, since the SMSCs that Reliance Communications and Reliance Telecom have, will have to be upgraded. Download the notification here.

I’ve been received unsolicited messages from the Hard Rock Café, after I’d given my number there to book a table, and MeraMobi, after I’d downloaded its app to try it out for a story.

All these notifications are steps in the right direction, but there really is no update on what the TRAI is doing about the DNC complaints. I’ve made several complaints since signing up over a year ago, and over the past four months, I’ve received no updates or calls from my service provider (Airtel) on what has been done regarding the complaints, despite calling up and requesting an update. Are mobile operators being held accountable the TRAI?

In the final quarter of the financial year, the Insurance companies will up the ante, and the unsolicit call problems will resurface…so who is eventually accountable? It’s not as if the DNC hasn’t helped, but it is still not very effective.

Do take a look at our list of Short Code Services in India

Oct 2008: Projections For 10M Broadband; India Adds 10.42 M Wireless; Crosses 5M Broadband

In October 2008, India added 10.42 million wireless subscribers - up from 10.07 million added in September. The wireless subscriber base is now 325.73 million, up from 315.24 million at the end of September. Importantly, and as expected, India crossed the 5 million Broadband connections mark, ending October with 5.05 million Broadband subs, up 150,000 for the month.

The teledensity is now 31.50%, though the gradual decline in wireline isn’t helping. 

Download for October 2008:
– CDMA Circle and Operator Data 
– GSM Circle and Operator Data
– TRAI Report On Broadband and Wireless

When Will India Reach 10 Million Broadband Subscribers?

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Airtel Blocks MyToday Longcode; This Time, It’s The Do Not Call Registry

How this issue is settled is of great importance, and it impacts the future of push SMS services from SMS GupShup and Google, apart from every single service provider who sends a push SMS to consumers.

Airtel has blocked MyToday SMS longcode, writes Netcore MD Rajesh Jain, citing complaints made by MyToday subscribers to Airtel about unsolicited SMS. (Update: this means that new users cannot sign up, and existing users cannot unsubscribe.) At the core of the debate, writes Jain, is whether an SMS Opt-in by a subscriber overrides a National Do Not Call (NDNC) registration or not.

The fact remains that Airtel cannot arbitrarily cite the NDNC and block access, unless subscribers have complained; there are obviously some subscribers who want to unsubscribe from the service, but because they don’t know how to, they’ve complained.

At the same time, I do believe that Jain is in the right - those consumers have chosen to opt-in. However, the onus is on MyToday to prove that they’ve opted in, and maintain records to that effect.

Airtel has blocked the long codes 9845398453 and 9845298452, and is being rather unrealistic by asking MyToday to get its subscribers to give in writing that they’ve subscribed, and quite ridiculous by asking MyToday to scrub its database clean of 10% of its subscribers who have signed up for the NDNC.

This includes me. I’m an Airtel subscriber and have signed up for MyToday services. I have solicited MyToday’s SMS services, so I want to receive those SMS’. At the same time, I don’t want to receive SMS’ from “Mr. Deal” and the “Hard Rock Café”. I did not sign up for those.

This is not MyToday’s first run-in with a mobile operator, or indeed Airtel. At the TRAI Open House discussion on MVAS (a must read if you’re in the Mobile business), Jain had called for transparency and the definition of a clear mechanism for settlement of disputes. 

“Rajesh Jain, MD of Netcore (MyToday) called for clear guidelines and a mechanism for settling disputes, saying that there is only a perception of a fairplay environment (which operators kept hinting at). Netcore’s MyToday services were curtailed for no apparent reason, and there was no way of dispute resolution then.”

Sadly, the TRAI has passed the buck, in this case, to Airtel.

(Updates: Confirmed from Netcore - updates are available, but users on Airtel cannot subscribe or unsubscribe, and edited post accordingly)

September 2008: India Adds 10.07 M Wireless, 170k Broadband Subs; 280k Wireline Cancellations

In September 2008, India added 10.07 million wireless subscribers - a significant step up from the 9 million odd monthly additions earlier this year. The wireless subscriber base is now 315.31 million, up from 305.24 million at the end of August. What is ironic is that the highest increase in wireless connections has come in the same month as one of the highest declines in wireline: with around 280,000 fixed line connections cancelled during the month, to bring the base down to 38.35 million, from 38.63 million in August.

With this, the teledensity is now up to 30.64 percent, with the total number of telephone (wireline and wireless) connections at 353.66 million.

India is also inching towards 5 million broadband connections - with around 170,000 broadband connections added in the month, the total base stands at 4.90 million. What’s important is that the fixed line cancellations are outpacing the addition of broadband connections - it’s a losing battle now for the Indian government, though it’s apparent that they really aren’t interested in broadband connectivity.

Q109: Quarterly India Internet & Mobile Numbers, And A Wireless Internet Story

The TRAI has released a report on the performance of telecom services, downloadable here. Some details we gleaned from the exhaustive 126 page report.

Internet
Wireless Internet
What surprised me most is the suggestion that there were 75.97 million wireless Internet users in India at the end of June 2008 (Q109). If you read the fine print (and we did), here’s the truth: that is essentially the number of users capable of accessing data services including Internet through mobile handset (GSM/ CDMA), and not the actual number. So even the growth in this base is not indicative of usage trends: June 2007 - 38.02 million, Sep 2007 - 46.37 million, Dec 2007 - 57.83 million, March 2008 - 65.50 million, June 2008 - 75.97 million.

Industry insiders have told us the number is more likely between 10-15 million users accessing the wireless Internet, and mobile operators have also spoken about an increase in the depth of WAP usage among customers. But, but, but - it’s NOT 75.97 million, and it looks like there’s spin involved in numbers even from regulators.

Dialup
– 11.6 million dialup subscribers by the end of Q109, up marginally by 510,000

– Around 5604 subs added per day.
– Growth rate declined Quarter on Quarter - from 7.08 percent in Q408 to 5.09% in Q109
– ARPU of Rs. 225
– Subscriber base: BSNL has base of 5.94 million (up from 5.64 million last quarter), MTNL has 1.92 million, while Airtel has 0.87 million.
Important: very low usage on dialup - of only 225 minutes per subscriber per month. The high cost of dialup may have something to do with this - it’s an ARPU/minute of Re. 1.

Broadband
– 4.38 million at the end of Q109, up from 3.87 million at the end of Q408
– Growth rate of 13.18%.
– The split:

DSL: 3.72 million
Cable Modem: 0.42 million
Ethernet LAN: 0.11 million
Fiber: 0.045 million
Leased Lines: 0.018 million

Important: 58.97% of wireline service providers reported more than 3 fault incidences per 100 subs per month. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s underreporting of faults.

Mobile

GSM
– Total subscriber base of 212.51 million, up from 192.70 million in the previous quarter.
– Growth for this quarter is 10.28 percent
– Bharti Airtel is the largest GSM operator, with 69.38 million subs, Vodafone has 49.20 million, BSNL has 36.36 million and Idea has 27.19 million.

– All India blended ARPU has declined by 9.3% from Rs. 234 Rs. 264 in March to Rs. 239 in June
– Postpaid ARPU declined to Rs. 600, down 5.9% from Rs. 638 in March
– Prepaid service ARPU declined to Rs. 204, down 8.9% from Rs. 224/- in March
– Minutes of Use: increased to 505 from 493 in Q1
– Metros have the lowest outgoing Minutes of Use per subscriber
– Outgoing SMS per subscriber continued to decline. Rate of decline has doubled to 14.5% in the quarter under review from a 7% decline in the quarter ending March 2008.

CDMA
– Total subscriber base is 74.36 million, up from 68.37 million in the previous quarter.
– The growth in this quarter is 8.76% as against 11.37% for the previous quarter.
– Reliance remains the largest CDMA mobile operator (42.71 million subs) followed by Tata Teleservices (26.33 million) and BSNL (4.59 million respectively.

– All India blended ARPU has declined to Rs. 139, from Rs. 159 for the quarter ending March 2008.
– According to the revenue reports submitted by the service providers for the quarter ending June 2008, revenue, net of “pass through”, from CDMA full mobility service is Rs. 2332.68 crores which was 2410.00 crores in the quarter ending March 2008 registering a decline of 3.20%.
– Postpaid ARPU was 3.95 times than that of prepaid ARPU - attributed to declining importance of processing fee on recharge coupon/ voucher purchased by prepaid subscribers.
– The total MOU per subscriber/ month has shown decline to 354 from 364 in March
– Outgoing MOU has shown increase to 182 from 180 per subscriber per month in previous quarter

Other noteworthy facts:
– The Gross Revenue and AGR of the Public Sector units in Telecom Sector is Rs.9756 Crores and Rs.8467 Crores respectively as against Rs.12233 Crores and Rs.10417 Crores for the previous quarter.
- The Gross Revenue and AGR of the Private Sector enterprises in Telecom Sector is placed at Rs.25555 Crores and Rs.18524 Crores respectively as against Rs.23537 Crores and 17427 Crores for the previous quarter.
- Average % of License Fee paid by Telecom Service Providers to AGR is 8.58% and Average % of Spectrum Charges to AGR is 2.76%.

India Adds 9.16 M Wireless Subs In August 2008, And Only 160k Broadband Subs

India crossed the 300 million wireless subscriber mark in August 2008 by adding 9.16 million wireless subscribers. The wireless subscriber base was 305.24 million at the end of August, according to official figures released by the TRAI. If if you combine both wireless and wireline subscribers, that’s a total of 343.87 million subscribers, and a tele-density of 29.83 percent. The number of wireless additions in August were marginally down from 9.22 million subscribers added in July. Do bear in mind that the “Wireless” subscriber base includes GSM, CDMA and WLL subscribers, because Reliance Communications does not report WLL subscribers separately.

The situation continues to be bleak on the broadband side, with just 4.73 million connections, and just 160,000 connections added in August 2008. We’re inching towards the 5 million connections mark. For three months in a row now, the rate at which broadband connections have been added has declined. Take a look at the numbers.

Do note that while the conversion rate (of Wireline to Broadband) appears to have improved in August, this is only because the number of wireline connections have declined as well. Ideally, a steady or growing wireline base, and a healthy conversion rate is what is needed.

We await the Wireless Broadband miracle.