Since the inception of Jio in the telecom market, the financials of the players in the industry have been witnessing troublesome days. The major players in India started witnessing a drop in the ARPU (average revenue per user) due to the low-cost plans.
Recently Indian Government approved a telecom relief in order to soothe the ailing telecom industry.
However, to generate increased revenue, telcos need to increase their tariff, which is not possible in the current scenario as there are conditions issued by DoT. Now, according to a report telcos can increase their ARPU without increasing their tariffs.
Indians are consuming more data now
According to the report, the data usage and penetration zooms are at their peak in the past couple of years. As per the research, keeping voice tariffs aside, the current trends involve increasing data tariffs and growing data usage per subscriber.
To add to this, the data subscribers in the overall user base in the past year have increased. These trends are indicating that ARPU of the industry can reach a new high without increasing the tariff.
Internet penetration is increasing
The rating agency also stated that as of June 2021, there has been a 4 million month-on-month increase in the number of subscribers across the nation.
This has made the total number of subscribers to 1,181 million. As per the report the same trend is being observed in the broadband segment as well. The number of broadband subscribers increased by 11.7 million in June 2021, this has made the total subscribers 769 million. This is indicative of the increase in broadband penetration in the country.
The report stated that there has been a growth of 65.1 percent in the number of wireless subscribers in June 2021 while it was 64.4 percent in May 2021 and only 47 percent in March 2019.
So, with increasing subscriber base and increasing data usage, we can finally hope that the telcos will be finally breathing a sigh of relief.