TRAI: Internet subscription rate has dropped, mobile services quality has suffered

Posted on 07-10-2009

Every three months, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India releases a report about the state of telecommunications in India. The quarterly report for the period April-June 2009 is now out (download PDF), and brings a few important points to the fore:

1) Internet subscribers increased to 14.05 million at the end of June 2009, registering a quarterly growth rate of 3.80%. However, this growth rate is lower than the growth rate seen in the previous quarter (5.3%).

2) There’s good news for broadband though, as share of broadband subscription in total Internet subscription increased from 46% in Mar-09 to 47% in June-09. What’s more, 94% of the new Internet subscribers over the past year have been broadband users – a total of 2.24 million.

3) Surprisingly, the average revenue earned from dialup Internet usage increased by 2.97%, from Rs. 236.47 in the last quarter to Rs 243.50 for the quarter ending June 2009.

4) The performance of the wireless service providers has deteriorated in this quarter as compared to the previous quarter in respect of the following parameters:-

a. Call Set-Up Success Rate (Within Licensee’s Own network)

b. Call drop rate.

c. Response time to the customer for assistance

(i) %age of calls answered (voice to voice) within 60 sec.

(ii) %age of calls answered (voice to voice) within 90 sec.

d. Complaints per 100 bills issued.

e. Percentage of complaints resolved within 4 weeks.

5) However, TRAI also noted that network congestion and voice clarity has improved greatly among wireless mobile carriers.

6) The average revenue earned from each mobile user has also dropped, with GSM users averaging Rs. 185 and CDMA users averaging Rs. 92.

7) The total telecom (wireless + wireline) subscriber base of India now stands at 464.82 million. Of these, 64.8% are wireless connections in urban areas and 27.1% in rural areas. Wireline connections account for a miniscule 5.9% in urban areas and just 2.2% in rural areas.

8) Bharti Airtel still leads the mobile market with 105.20 million subscribers, accounting for 22.6% of the share. It is followed by BSNL, Reliance and Vodafone, who account for 17.9%, 17.4% and 16.4% of the market respectively.

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