In order to tell this story, I will use various graphics which will describe the changing landscape in various dimensions — wireless, wireline, rural, urban, and the most important of all — “Active Subscribers”. In the end, we will be able to see how the various operators were poised against each other in the past, how are they doing now, and how they are likely to do in the future. Hence, without wasting any more time let’s dive straight into the analysis.
Total Subscribers
The following chart provides a bird’s eye view of this trend.
One can clearly see that RJIO has made rapid progress initially, but now its growth rate has saturated, and to an extent even dropped. Bharti (Airtel) has been making steady progress and is able to still maintain a positive growth rate. VI’s growth rate has dropped significantly. BSNL, however, has remained steady.
Wireless Subscribers
The following chart provides a bird’s eye view of the wireless subscriber trend for various operators.
RJIO as of April 22 has 405 million subs. This is followed by Bharti and VI with 361 & 259 million respectively. RJIO wireless subscribers based has dropped due to the clean-up was undertaken to get rid of the dormant user. BSNL is going steady with 113 million subscribers.
Visitor Location Register
The following chart provides a bird’s eye view of the various operator’s VLR trends. This data provides an ability to estimate the total number of active subscribers in the system. In other words, this excludes those subscribers who are lying dormant — might be due to inactive SIMs or number swaps. Note that VLR is an approximate metric. The reason:- it also captures the total number of roamers as well, who might be a subscriber of a different operator, but using the network only on a temporary basis.
Bharti’s VLR numbers are 97.65%. This is followed by RJIO at 93.39%, followed by VI at 85.77%. BSNL and MTNL are far behind.
Wireless Subscriber — Actual vs Active
The following chart provides a comparison of these two metrics for the key operators of the Indian telecom sector.
It is clear from the above, that Bharti has the best quality of subscribers, as their active subscribers are at par with actual. RJIO is slowly catching up. VI and BSNL have a lot of catching up to do.
Wireless Subscriber % Market Share
The following chart captures the markets share of key operators on total actual subscribers.
RJIO is on top but has lost some market share recently. Bharti is gaining market share, and VI is losing.
Wireless Active Subscribers % Market Share
The following chart captures this data.
One can see that Bharti has more or less been able to protect its market share after the entry of RJIO. Most of the RJIO’s gains have come from the share of VI. And the other player’s share, who have exited the market share has converged into BSNL.
Wireless Urban Subscribers % Market Share
The urban market is important as it has all the high-paying users. Looking at the following chart provides us with a clear view of how players are pitched competitively against each other.
Bharti’s latest market share is 29.87%, but RJIO is way ahead with 36.64%. Now since the VLR numbers are not segmented into urban and rural by TRAI, we can tell how many of these subscribers are active. Hence, it is very difficult to ascertain the actual competitiveness of the market by just looking at this metric.
Wireless Rural Subscribers % Market Share
The following chart tells the story.
In rural market share, both Bharti and RJIO are poised equally with 33.7 & 34.1% respectively. VI is behind with a 25.13% share. BSNL is distant 4th with only 7% share.
Wireline Subscribers
The following chart provides a bird’s eye view of the wireline subscriber trend for various operators.
This gives a very interesting picture. RJIO has been gaining customers and its growth is on a rising trend. BSNL is losing subscribers, however, Bharti is gaining but at a much slower rate. VI’s numbers are insignificant.
Conclusion
There are the following key takeaways from this analysis. a) India’s market has matured, as the overall subscriber growth rate has plateaued; b) Wireline subs are growing, but slowly and the operators have a lot of catching up to do compared to their international counterparts; c) Bharti has the best quality subscribers, as their active subscribers are much closer to the actual compared to others; d) Lately, RJIO has improved its subscriber quality significantly by running a cleanup campaign; e) VI is losing subscriber, both active and actual; f) RJIO is much ahead in % market share in urban subscribers, but their quality can’t be ascertained as specific VLR numbers are not available; g) RJIO wireline subscribers growth rate is much higher than others, and hence it is posied very well for providing fixed-line broadband; h) Rural markets share of both RJIO and Bharti is at par; i) VI has very little wireline subscribers and therefore needs 5G badly to compete with others in the broadband segment; j) BSNL has maintained its overall market share but has lost significantly in the wireline segment and this must be a concern.
It will be interesting to observe how this landscape changes further with the advent of 5G. Hope it will be in the interest of all the stakeholders, especially the consumers.
(Views expressed are of my own and do not reflect that of my employer)
PS: Find the list of other relevant articles in the embedded link.
