The Competition Commission of India put out a 34 page report this month on the state of the telecom industry from a competition perspective. The report was compiled based on a combination of stakeholder inputs and reviews of publicly available material. Industry trends Market structure and price competition Prices and market dominance: Over the years, data prices have plummeted to less than ₹10 per GB, with Reliance Jio emerging as the dominant operator with around one third market share in subscribers and Adjusted Gross Revenue. Data use has grown to over 10GB per user per month, and calls have grown to over 600 minutes per user per month. ARPU composition: Average Revenue Per User stands at ₹109–154 as of March 2020. Over 40% of user revenue now comes from data, as opposed to over 10% in 2014. Jio effect, incumbent trouble: Low tariffs became the norm after the market was forced to respond to Jio's entry in 2016. Jio was a new network so faced fewer financial difficulties compared to incumbent operators in upgrading legacy infrastructure. The competition forced Vi and Airtel to aggressively pursue high-value recharges, "thus narrowing the digital divide" in rural areas. Vi maintains a narrow lead in rural markets. Both telcos are also positioning postpaid plans as premium offerings. Technological evolution and data based services Spectrum: Spectrum is needed to provide better services in 4G networks. Contiguous spectrum blocks help achieve operational efficiency. Spectrum liberalisation in 2016 helped incumbent telcos mobilize their networks for 2G, 3G as well as…
