{"id":1944,"date":"2012-09-26T15:25:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T09:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.entecity.com\/?p=1944"},"modified":"2012-10-03T15:12:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T09:42:07","slug":"decline-in-mobile-subscriber-base-good-for-indian-telecom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/decline-in-mobile-subscriber-base-good-for-indian-telecom\/","title":{"rendered":"Decline in mobile subscriber base, Good for Indian telecom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time, the country has witnessed a drop in telecom subscribers. According to latest report from TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), telecom user base has declined from 965.52 million users to 944.81 millions in July. TRAI<\/a> said the reason for the drop was due to the large scale disconnection by some of the service providers. However, experts in the field are in the opinion that this decline is not due to market saturation and not a cause for worry for the Telecom companies. Meanwhile operators\u00a0like Vodafone and\u00a0Bharti\u00a0Airtel has reported\u00a01.2 million and 1.5 million additional subscribers respectively<\/p>\n

What caused the drop in subscriber base?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Experts point out that the drop in subscriber base is mainly due to two reasons. Big players like Reliance Communications had removed around 20 Million inactive mobile subscribers from its base. This is done to release the blocked number series.”With an objective to release the substantial blocked resources of number series and in context of Department of Telecom’s stringent guidelines on issuance of fresh numbers, RCom has decided to deactivate the inactive prepaid subscribers who have not had any usage in the last 60 days,”- Said RCom spokesperson. Another reason that lead to the drop was the exit of relatively smaller operators. Service providers like Etisalat, Swan Telecom has left the scene. Other companies like Telenor and Sistema which are in joint ventures are selling their stakes to leave the country completely.<\/p>\n

“Indian telecom sector is undergoing a transition after several years of high growth”- said Shiv Putcha, Principal Analyst at Ovum.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why this is good for Indian Telecom industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead of merely increasing the user base, telecom companies are now concentrating on increasing the Average Revenue per User (ARPU). Analysts in the field say this approach is beneficial to both Telecom companies and subscribers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn India same people use multiple SIMs to get a new scheme available in the market or maybe because people got the SIM for free. And this creates a lot of unused numbers and an increased load on the operator network\u201d- Says Rajan Matthew, Director General of the Cellular Operators Association of India.<\/p>\n

Such a situation happened because of the intense competition in the telecom industry but as their business slows down they are trying to earn more revenue instead of increasing subscriber base.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The ARPU approach of increasing revenue generation per user is a good thing as the ultimate valuation of the company is based on it- he added.<\/p>\n

Price should not be the only competitive differentiator. Better quality and better service should also be on the table. Operators need to create awareness more on their value added service. People need to know, they can do so much things with their mobile phones other than calling and texting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time, the country has witnessed a drop in telecom subscribers. According to latest report from TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), telecom user base has declined from 965.52 million users to 944.81 millions in July. TRAI said the reason for the drop was due to the large scale disconnection by some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[99,152],"class_list":["post-1944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-mobile","tag-trai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}