The government’s licence fee collections, though, rose 1.6% on-quarter to Rs 4,921 crore in July-September, latest operator performance data put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed Friday.
The telecom sector, in turn, recorded 2.4% sequential growth in adjusted gross revenue (AGR) in the fiscal second quarter, gaining from the spill-over effect of tariff hikes taken by private carriers in November 2021.
Higher quarterly AGR growth for the telecom industry is meant to result in higher licence fee and SUC collections for the government. But the quarterly SUC takings plunged as the DoT, in late-June 2022, had scrapped the 3% floor earlier applicable on this levy. Further, after it decided not to charge SUC from last July’s 5G airwave auction onwards, telco payouts towards this fee has reduced to under 1% of AGR from around 3-4% earlier. Telcos continue to pay 8% of their AGR as licence fees to the government.
Operator performance data put out by Trai showed that Bharti Airtel notched up the fastest sequential AGR growth in the September quarter among the three private carriers, with Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea being the other two.
Airtel’s quarterly AGR, or revenue from licensed services, grew 4.39% sequentially to Rs 17,893.47 crore in the July-September period, while Jio and Vi’s AGR rose 3.14% and 1.66% on-quarter to Rs 22,192.19 crore and Rs 7,478.73 crore, respectively. Overall, the telecom industry AGR rose to Rs 61,981 crore during the period.
Trai has also included the applicable gross revenue (ApGR) numbers for the telecom sector in the September quarter performance report. This is since just over a year back, DoT had revised the definition of AGR and introduced the concept of ApGR, which is determined by excluding all non-telecom revenue earned by telcos from their gross revenue (GR). Thereafter, AGR is determined from ApGR by further removing more non-telecom service-related items, including roaming revenue passed onto other eligible/entitled telecommunication services providers.Overall sectoral minutes of consumption fell, with the all-India average minutes of usage per subscriber per month from wireless services down 2.14% sequentially to 894 in the quarter to September, amid higher rates.
Access services contributed 81.2% to total telecom services AGR in the fiscal second quarter.
Trai’s report on the telecom industry’s fiscal second-quarter performance also indicated that monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) from wireless services rose 2.81% on-quarter to Rs 137.31.
The data also showed the country’s internet user base rose 1.68% sequentially to 850.95 million in the September quarter. Of them, 820.13 million were wireless internet users and 30.82 million were wired users.
