About 3 weeks after the end of every month, all Telecom Operators declare their Circle-wise Subscriber Base, which basically includes all the Activated Sim Cards out in the market. This also takes into consideration the Sim Cards that have been De-activated due to MNP requests or 90-days Zero Use period. But thanks to the multi-Sim usage profiles of several lakhs of Indians, not all Activated Sim cards are in use all the time. For this the TRAI started collating the VLR (Visitor Location Register) Database from all operators and declaring the highest VLR Percentages for every respective month. VLR basically tells us how many Sim Cards of each operator was actually hooked to it's Network alteast for some time during that respective month. But all this Data Collation takes additional 4-6 weeks. The VLR Data for the month of June'16 was declared by TRAI on 9th of Sept.'16, i.e. nearly 10 weeks after the end of June month.
I have now started arranging Operator-wise All-India Subscriber Base Information from the period ending March'16, into my Spreadsheets, in order to analyse the changing scenario in the Telecom market & it's possible co-relation with the Revenue performances of each operator. I had presented my views on Telecom AGR numbers for Apr-Jun'16 quarter a couple of weeks ago at this link. Bharti Airtel was the clear Best Performer in terms of Q-o-Q growth in AGR, followed by Vodafone and then Idea Cellular. It will be interesting to see how the VLR Subscriber numbers for each operator have changed during the quarter. Remember that Reliance Jio had started issuing it's Sim cards under the LYF Handset Preview Offer from the middle of May'16 and is estimated to have activated nearly 1 million Sim Cards during the quarter ending June'16. Another major development during the quarter was Closure of CDMA Operations of Reliance Communication (ADAG) across the country during the month of June'16. The company wished to switch it's CDMA users to it's 4G network, which it was launching in collaboration with RelJio, but everyone knows that the switchover wasn't smooth for the company & it's subscribers. This CDMA closure has caused a major upheaval in the numbers reported by RCom.
The Table here displays the Operator-wise All-India VLR % reported by TRAI for every month since March'16. This figure normally considers the Highest VLR number for that particular month. As we can see, the Overall Industry-wide VLR % number has seen a nominal 64 bps decline between March'16 to May'16, but a sharp 186 bps decline during June'16. RCom's VLR % dropping from 89.10% to 72.50% is the main reason for a sharp decline in June'16. Let's ignore RCom for the time being as it forms less than 3.5% of the Industry's AGR, despite a much stronger subscriber market share. It is interesting to note that each of the Top-3 operators, i.e. Airtel, Vodafone & Idea, have seen a small erosion in their VLR % during the Apr-June'16 period. While Airtel has seen an 80 bps decline, Idea has reported a 108 bps erosion and Vodafone has posted the biggest decline at 136 bps. These VLR % declines experienced by the three largest operators is most certainly due to two factors: Increased competitive pressure from BSNL and few other smaller operators & secondly from the fact that nearly 1 million RelJio Sim cards were activated during the second half of the quarter. RelJio has not yet started reporting it's Subscriber numbers to TRAI as it was undertaking 'Testing' of it's Networks until 5th of September'16. Hopefully we should be getting RelJio's subscriber numbers from September'16 onwards.
The Table alongside compares the EoP VLR Subscriber base of each operator at the end of March'16 and June'16 to know the progress the made by each of them. The Highlight of the table has to be RCom, which has lost over 2 crore VLR subscribers during the quarter, with 90% of them during the month of June'16. What is surprising is that RCom was claiming to have about 5 million CDMA subscribers, which it was asking to switch to 4G. But the drop in VLR subscriber base is 4 times of that number. If the VLR numbers for July & August don't post some big correction, then RCom is potentially going down the Closure path in the coming quarters. Apart from RCom, Vodafone was the biggest loser during the quarter, in terms of VLR subscriber base, having lost over 1.3 million subscribers, which is quite a big surprise. Tata Tele was next with a loss of nearly 0.8 million, which is not surprising given the fact that it is also curtailing it's CDMA operations in several circles. In all likelihood, Tata Tele must has been a Net Gainer in VLR subscribers on the GSM front. Idea was the next big loser with nearly 0.7 million users, possibly mainly due to reduced number of In-roamers on it's network. Until a few months ago, subscribers of Airtel & Vodafone were using Idea's 3G networks in certain circles via 3G-Roaming agreements. Airtel has pulled out of these agreements after having launched 3G service on it's own in 21 of the 22 circles. This must have impacted Idea's VLR subscriber numbers as well as Revenues to some extent.
In terms of percentage gainers, Aircel added nearly 2.5% (nearly 1.6 million) new VLR subscribers during the quarter. But Bharti Airtel was the biggest gainer in terms of Gross VLR subscribers addition at nearly 2.3 million new users. Airtel's VLR subscribers market share at the end of June'16 now stands at just over 27%, commanding a huge 6%+ lead over 2nd placed Vodafone. BSNL/MTNL too added nearly 0.7 million new VLR subscribers, followed by Telenor which added a little under half a million new users. In terms of VLR subscribers market share, Aircel is now closing in on BSNL/MTNL's combined base. Both Aircel as well as BSNL are aggressively marketing their respective 3G services with some very attractively priced Data packs. It will be interesting to see is BSNL/MTNL manages to stay ahead of Aircel in the coming months or not.
RelJio is expected to have started impacting the VLR numbers of all existing operators to a very small extent from June'16 onwards, but the impact is expected to get much larger from Aug or Sept onwards. With RelJio having announced a full scale launch from 5th September, we can expect the operator to start declaring it's subscriber numbers from the current month. I will try & post a fresh update on VLR numbers status every month from hereon, possibly as soon as I receive the numbers.
I have now started arranging Operator-wise All-India Subscriber Base Information from the period ending March'16, into my Spreadsheets, in order to analyse the changing scenario in the Telecom market & it's possible co-relation with the Revenue performances of each operator. I had presented my views on Telecom AGR numbers for Apr-Jun'16 quarter a couple of weeks ago at this link. Bharti Airtel was the clear Best Performer in terms of Q-o-Q growth in AGR, followed by Vodafone and then Idea Cellular. It will be interesting to see how the VLR Subscriber numbers for each operator have changed during the quarter. Remember that Reliance Jio had started issuing it's Sim cards under the LYF Handset Preview Offer from the middle of May'16 and is estimated to have activated nearly 1 million Sim Cards during the quarter ending June'16. Another major development during the quarter was Closure of CDMA Operations of Reliance Communication (ADAG) across the country during the month of June'16. The company wished to switch it's CDMA users to it's 4G network, which it was launching in collaboration with RelJio, but everyone knows that the switchover wasn't smooth for the company & it's subscribers. This CDMA closure has caused a major upheaval in the numbers reported by RCom.
In terms of percentage gainers, Aircel added nearly 2.5% (nearly 1.6 million) new VLR subscribers during the quarter. But Bharti Airtel was the biggest gainer in terms of Gross VLR subscribers addition at nearly 2.3 million new users. Airtel's VLR subscribers market share at the end of June'16 now stands at just over 27%, commanding a huge 6%+ lead over 2nd placed Vodafone. BSNL/MTNL too added nearly 0.7 million new VLR subscribers, followed by Telenor which added a little under half a million new users. In terms of VLR subscribers market share, Aircel is now closing in on BSNL/MTNL's combined base. Both Aircel as well as BSNL are aggressively marketing their respective 3G services with some very attractively priced Data packs. It will be interesting to see is BSNL/MTNL manages to stay ahead of Aircel in the coming months or not.
RelJio is expected to have started impacting the VLR numbers of all existing operators to a very small extent from June'16 onwards, but the impact is expected to get much larger from Aug or Sept onwards. With RelJio having announced a full scale launch from 5th September, we can expect the operator to start declaring it's subscriber numbers from the current month. I will try & post a fresh update on VLR numbers status every month from hereon, possibly as soon as I receive the numbers.
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