The telecom sector’s gross revenue fell by around 9 per cent to ₹2.55 lakh crore in 2017, as compared with ₹2.79 lakh crore in 2016, showed data released by TRAI on Friday.
This led to a decline in government collections too in the form of licence fee and spectrum usage charge (SUC).
The yearly SUC and licence fee declined by around 33 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively, against the previous year, the data showed. However, the number of subscribers grew over the year, even though the operators’ revenue declined during the year.
Telephone subscribers
“The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,151.78 million at the end of December 2016 to 1,190.67 million at the end of December 2017, registering a yearly growth rate of 3.38 per cent. The overall teledensity in India increased from 89.90 at the end of December 2016 to 91.90 at the end of December 2017 at the growth rate of 2.22,” TRAI said in its report.
The subscription in urban areas increased from 683.14 million in 2016 to 688.25 million in 2017 at the yearly growth rate of 0.75 per cent. However, urban teledensity declined from 170.15 in 2016 to 168.29 at the end 2017, with yearly decline rate of 1.10 per cent, it said.
But rural telephone subscription increased from 468.64 million in the previous year to 502.42 million at the end of last year at the yearly growth rate of 7.21 per cent. Rural teledensity also increased from 53.27 to 56.66 with yearly growth rate of 6.36 per cent.
There were 13 mobile service providers operational in 2016 that reduced to 12 in 2017 with Videocon closing down its mobile services business. By 2017-end, Reliance Communications, Sistema Shyam (merged with RCom) and Quadrant closed their operations.
On the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) part, the AGR earned by operator from sale of telecom services, declined by 18.87 per cent to ₹1.6 lakh crore at the end of 2017 from ₹1.98 lakh crore in 2016.
RJio revenue grows
The AGR revenue chart showed that only Reliance Jio registered growth while all other players in the sector posted loss in revenues. RJio recorded massive jump in AGR at ₹7,466 crore in 2017 from loss of ₹ 303 crore in end-2016.
But, country’s largest operator Bharti Airtel’s AGR declined by more than 24 per cent to ₹36,922 crore from ₹48,880 crore in 2016. So of Vodafone’s AGR (declining by 24 per cent to ₹26,308 crore), Idea Cellular’s (23.17 per cent to ₹22,616 crore), BSNL’s (19.42 per cent to ₹10,564 crore) and MTNL’s (30.76 per cent to ₹1,985 crore), the TRAI report added.