Indian
Telecom Industry started in 1851 when the first operational land lines were
laid by the government near Calcutta (seat of British power) and now driven by
wireless revolution, the Indian telecom industry is one of the fastest growing
in the world contributing to nearly 2% of the Indian GDP and it’s bound to
increase considering huge potential of Indian Urban market and untapped rural
market. Needless to say, it also has one of the lowest tariffs in the world
enabled by the hyper-competition in the market.
However,
over last few years, telecom sector has witnessed several setbacks in terms of
various scams, cancellation of 2G licenses of many operators, unsuccessful
launch of 3G (not so great customer database), uncertain policy etc. Considering all these significant negatives,
industry did not seem (and certainly is not!) in its healthy state. And thus, it came as a big surprise when the
Indian Telecom Industry actually grew by 7% in the last fiscal.
If
you see an industry getting defeated, then you are certainly not looking at the
Telecom!! Yes, the telecom service industry revenue went up from 1,71,347 Cr.
to 1,82,459 Cr. in FY 2011-12 according to telecom journal Voice & Data.
Various telecom services counted in the survey include cellular, fixed line,
National Long Distance (NLD), International Long Distance (ILD), broadband and
VSAT services.
SOURCE: VOICE & DATA
1) Cellular: It grew by almost 17 % and contributed 65 %
of the entire industry’s revenue. The total cellular subscriber base was
increased by 117 million during last fiscal and three major players are Bharti
Airtel, Vodafone and Idea according to the market share.
2) Fixed,
NLD & ILD: Fixed and NLD segment did not see any
growth. People are going wireless and fixed line industry has seen dip in their
revenue by almost 19%. Similarly, NLD segment has seen a dip of 15% perhaps
because of the fact that tariff for local calls and long distance calls are
almost identical. Amongst three, ILD segment has witnessed minuscule growth of
0.27 %. Amongst top 5 players in ILD segment, Tata Comm. grew by 20 % and
Vodafone grew by 40 %.
3) Broadband:
Despite the popularity of the Internet in India, broadband segment has seen dip
of 0.46 %. It should be noted that the Internet penetration in India is one of
the lowest in the world and only accounts for 8-10% of the population compared
to OECD counties, where avg. penetration rate is over 50%.
P.S.
The Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international economic
organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic
progress and world trade.
4) VSAT:
The term VSAT is an acronym for Very Small Aperture
Terminals. Any requirement for connectivity in remote areas where other
technologies cannot provide services or where dedicated and
uninterrupted data connectivity is required (like core
banking facility and the involvement of financial transaction) then the answer lies
with VSAT services. VAST industry in India saw the growth of 6 % in FY 11-12
and credit goes to the growing demand from banking industry.
Kaushal
Joshi
Class of
2014