Revenue of telcos from services falls 2.67%

The revenue of telecom operators from services declined by 2.67 per cent in the quarter ended December 2012, despite increase in monthly consumer's spend on mobile phone usage by around 3 per cent, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Adjusted gross revenue of telecom operator, earned from telecom services, declined by 2.67 per cent at Rs 34,527.50 crore (Rs 345.27 billion), while the gross revenue decreased by 0.15 per cent at Rs 52,858.39 crore (Rs 528.58 billion) on quarterly basis, the report said.

As far as consumer spending is concerned, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said the Monthly Average Revenue Per User for GSM service increased by 3.03 per cent to Rs 98 in quarter ended December 2012 from Rs 95 in the previous quarter.

In its performance indicator report released on Monday, the telecom regulator also said on annual basis this was 2.25 per cent increase in each GSM subscribers spend in a month.

In case of CDMA mobile users, they increased their spend by 8.84 per cent on annual basis and 2.8 per cent to Rs 80 in quarter ended December 2012 from Rs 78 in quarter ended September 2012.

However, the revenue of sector on annual basis improved during the quarter ended December 2012.

"The year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in GR and AGR over the same quarter in last year has been 7.08 per cent and 1.31

per cent, respectively," Trai said.

The regulator found increase in Internet subscribers on quarterly basis increased by 5.49 per cent to 25.33 million at the end of December 2012 quarter from 24.01 million in the September quarter.

Number of Broadband subscribers increased to 14.98 million at the end of December 2012 from 14.68 million at the end of September 2012, registering a quarterly growth of 2.02 per cent and y-o-y growth of 12.23 per cent, the report said.

The report shows that India lost around 4.2 crore (42 million) telecom subscribers during the December quarter.

The number of telephone subscribers declined to 89.55 crore (895.5 million) at the end of December 2012 from 93.77 crore (937.7 million) at the end of September 2012.

"This reflects y-o-y negative growth of 3.35 per cent over the same quarter of last year," Trai said.