When I posted my previous report on Telecom Market Shares in the 3rd week of Dec'15, I was expecting RelJio to start commercial operations on 28th Dec'15. But it did not happen. Now we are in the middle of March'16, but still there is no news/signs of launch of RelJio's commercial operations. We now have Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) details for the Quarter ending Dec'15. And possibly we will have even the March'16 Quarterly report without any start of RelJio effect. I will keep tracking the progress closely as I am expecting things to start changing rapidly after RelJio's entry.
In my previous report, I had discussed progress in the Quarterly AGR numbers of all operators. This time I will focus on Trailing-Twelve-Months AGR numbers of only the Top-8 operators, as these operators constitute around 97-98% of both subscribers market share and AGR market share. The analysis of T-T-M numbers gives us a better idea of a trend as individual quarterly fluctuations gets averaged out.
Let's first quickly have a look at the progress in subscriber market shares of the Top-8 operators for the Dec'15 quarter compared to the situation at the end of Dec'14. The Top-3 operators have continued to strengthen their combined market share. But amongst them, Airtel & Idea Cellular are clearly the best performers with a gain of 106 bps each over the last 12 months. On the other hand Vodafone has gained just 23 bps over the same period. Amongst the remaining 5 operators in the list, RCom has lost 128 bps and Tata Tele has lost 100 bps, primarily because both these operators are rapidly phasing out their CDMA mobile operations to be able to use this spectrum purely for Wireless Data operations. The sooner they finish with this phasing out process, the sooner they will be able to use the 800/850 MHz spectrum for 4G services. Telenor has finally crossed the 5% subscriber market share mark on the back of their 'Sabse Sasta' campaign across it's 7 circles of operation, which is a very significant achievement. But thanks to this very campaign, Telenor could remain the poor-man's mobile phone service.
Coming to the AGR numbers, the industry-wide AGR for calendar year 2015 crossed the Rs.1,50,000 crores mark, posting a Y-o-Y growth of 12.2%. The T-T-M AGR now stands at Rs.1,50,692 crores. Amongst the Top-8 operators, the best outperformer was India's No.3 Wireless operators, i.e. Idea Cellular with 23% Y-o-Y growth, followed by No.8 operator Telenor which managed 22.5% Y-o-Y growth. Apart from these two, the only other operator to post better-than-industry growth rate was Bharti Airtel with 14.3% growth. Vodafone reported a growth of 11.9%, which is marginally slower than industry growth rate. Hence while Bharti Airtel & Idea Cellular reported impressive improvements of 0.6% and 1.6% in their respective AGR market shares, Vodafone underperformed with a very marginal 0.1% drop. Since Telenor is much smaller in AGR terms, it's market share improvement was just 0.2%, despite 22.5% growth in AGR. Aircel & Tata Tele too managed some decent growth of around 9.5% each, hence the drop in their AGR market share was also very marginal. The biggest loser, without doubt, was RCom which lost 1.3% from it's AGR market share on the back of 12.7% Y-o-Y de-growth in it's T-T-M AGR numbers.
RCom is rapidly losing it's business and that's probably the reason why it is hurriedly trying to consolidate with Sistema & Aircel. In the Press Releases that RCom has given in recent months about their potential consolidation move, they claim that it will make it India's No.2 operator in terms of subscriber market share. Yes, arithmetically RCom+Sistema+Aircel will have a subscriber market share just ahead of Vodafone as of Dec'15, but the speed at which RCom itself is losing it's subscribers & revenues, I don't think the combined entity will be able to hold that position for long. The situation is much worse on the AGR market share front. The Trio has a AGR market share of just 10.7% on a T-T-M basis, which makes it a distant No.4 in AGR rankings. If BSNL, which currently has 8.8% AGR market share, successfully continues it's resurgence and RCom continues to lose it's revenues, we could see BSNL overtaking the Trio in a year's time.
Bharti Airtel's T-T-M AGR has hit the Rs.45,000 crores mark and a market share of 29.9%. It has posted stronger growth in the last 2 quarters on the back of it's aggressive 3G & 4G network rollout announcements in more & more cities across the country. Idea Cellular's strong AGR growth has brought it significantly closer to Vodafone in AGR stakes. With a wider 4G footprint, Idea Cellular could close the gap further down at a rapid pace and could be within striking distance of overtaking it in a year's time from now.
Amongst the rest of the pack, BSNL is showing promising signs of improved progress over the recent couple of quarters and it's quite obvious from the charts as of now. On the other hand Tata Tele & Aircel are both showing signs of fatigue in their AGR progress. RCom is already on the path of rapid descent as discussed earlier. Telenor badly needs more ammunition or newer weapons to accelerate it's progress. It certainly needs to expand beyond it's limited 7-circles operation and seriously look at offering Wireless Data service, which is going to be the growth driver going forward.
Finally.....I certainly hope that by the time the AGR report on March'16 quarter is out some time in the month of May, we will have something to discuss about RelJio's services & tariff plans.
In my previous report, I had discussed progress in the Quarterly AGR numbers of all operators. This time I will focus on Trailing-Twelve-Months AGR numbers of only the Top-8 operators, as these operators constitute around 97-98% of both subscribers market share and AGR market share. The analysis of T-T-M numbers gives us a better idea of a trend as individual quarterly fluctuations gets averaged out.
Let's first quickly have a look at the progress in subscriber market shares of the Top-8 operators for the Dec'15 quarter compared to the situation at the end of Dec'14. The Top-3 operators have continued to strengthen their combined market share. But amongst them, Airtel & Idea Cellular are clearly the best performers with a gain of 106 bps each over the last 12 months. On the other hand Vodafone has gained just 23 bps over the same period. Amongst the remaining 5 operators in the list, RCom has lost 128 bps and Tata Tele has lost 100 bps, primarily because both these operators are rapidly phasing out their CDMA mobile operations to be able to use this spectrum purely for Wireless Data operations. The sooner they finish with this phasing out process, the sooner they will be able to use the 800/850 MHz spectrum for 4G services. Telenor has finally crossed the 5% subscriber market share mark on the back of their 'Sabse Sasta' campaign across it's 7 circles of operation, which is a very significant achievement. But thanks to this very campaign, Telenor could remain the poor-man's mobile phone service.Coming to the AGR numbers, the industry-wide AGR for calendar year 2015 crossed the Rs.1,50,000 crores mark, posting a Y-o-Y growth of 12.2%. The T-T-M AGR now stands at Rs.1,50,692 crores. Amongst the Top-8 operators, the best outperformer was India's No.3 Wireless operators, i.e. Idea Cellular with 23% Y-o-Y growth, followed by No.8 operator Telenor which managed 22.5% Y-o-Y growth. Apart from these two, the only other operator to post better-than-industry growth rate was Bharti Airtel with 14.3% growth. Vodafone reported a growth of 11.9%, which is marginally slower than industry growth rate. Hence while Bharti Airtel & Idea Cellular reported impressive improvements of 0.6% and 1.6% in their respective AGR market shares, Vodafone underperformed with a very marginal 0.1% drop. Since Telenor is much smaller in AGR terms, it's market share improvement was just 0.2%, despite 22.5% growth in AGR. Aircel & Tata Tele too managed some decent growth of around 9.5% each, hence the drop in their AGR market share was also very marginal. The biggest loser, without doubt, was RCom which lost 1.3% from it's AGR market share on the back of 12.7% Y-o-Y de-growth in it's T-T-M AGR numbers.
Bharti Airtel's T-T-M AGR has hit the Rs.45,000 crores mark and a market share of 29.9%. It has posted stronger growth in the last 2 quarters on the back of it's aggressive 3G & 4G network rollout announcements in more & more cities across the country. Idea Cellular's strong AGR growth has brought it significantly closer to Vodafone in AGR stakes. With a wider 4G footprint, Idea Cellular could close the gap further down at a rapid pace and could be within striking distance of overtaking it in a year's time from now.
Amongst the rest of the pack, BSNL is showing promising signs of improved progress over the recent couple of quarters and it's quite obvious from the charts as of now. On the other hand Tata Tele & Aircel are both showing signs of fatigue in their AGR progress. RCom is already on the path of rapid descent as discussed earlier. Telenor badly needs more ammunition or newer weapons to accelerate it's progress. It certainly needs to expand beyond it's limited 7-circles operation and seriously look at offering Wireless Data service, which is going to be the growth driver going forward.
Finally.....I certainly hope that by the time the AGR report on March'16 quarter is out some time in the month of May, we will have something to discuss about RelJio's services & tariff plans.
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