Telcos clock 10% rise in revenues in Oct-Dec of 2014:TRAI

NEW DELHI: Telecom operators recorded 9.54 per cent in their revenues to Rs 63,955 crore in October-December quarter of 2014, a TRAI report said.

During the same period of 2013, the combined gross revenue of operators stood at Rs 58,385 crore, the TRAI’s performance indicator report said.

The adjusted gross revenue (AGR), on the basis of which telcos pay revenue share as licence fee and spectrum charges to government, increased by 10.15 per cent to Rs 43,591 crore during the period against Rs 39,575 crore in the last quarter of 2013.

The monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) of GSM operators like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Uninor increased by 5.8 per cent year-on-year to Rs 118 in reported period.

The ARPU for CDMA operators like MTS, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices increased by 4.8 per cent yer-on-year to Rs 109.

The number of telephone subscribers in the country increased by 6.09 per cent to 970.97 million in the reported quarter. The mobile or wireless subscriber base on yearly basis increased by 6.51 per cent to 943.97 million at the end of December 2014.

The total number of Internet subscribers in the country stood at 267.39 million at the end of December 2014. Subscribers of GSM and CDMA network combined consumed an average of 89.43 megabyte of internet data per month through their mobile.

On CDMA network, average data consumed by a subscriber in a month stood at 251.93 MB while on GSM network it was 79.73 MB in the October-December 2014 period.